


That Time I Bought A Soviet Killbot

by razboinicul_iernii



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Assets & Handlers, Awesome Pepper Potts, BAMF Natasha, Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Canon Divergence - Iron Man 2, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint just does what she does but slower, Confused Bucky Barnes, Gratuitous Seinfeld References, Hydra (Marvel), Palladium Poisoning, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, run on sentences ahoy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-08 09:15:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6848536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/razboinicul_iernii/pseuds/razboinicul_iernii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was a person. Which was weird and scary but also intriguing and asked him why why why like a three year old who'd just learned the word. The fog cleared a little more and made the mystery even more intriguing because, hi, yes, glacier man had a metal arm. "Well," he muttered at that because it wasn't just some vague approximation of a human limb like most prosthetics. He hardly believed it was real metal at first, maybe some kind of weird paint job, but no. The symmetry with the right arm was exact, and a thousand more questions popped into his head-</p>
<p>"Well what?" Pepper asked a few steps back and Tony froze. Well, 'froze' seemed like such a strong word as he leaned over a man literally encased in ice but language was a funny thing."</p>
<p>Or: Due to the most bizarre clerical error ever, Tony Stark ends up buying the Winter Soldier. Of course he doesn't ask for a refund on something so interesting as a metal-armed cyborg, especially not when it starts spouting off about enforcing the will of the supposedly long-dead supernazis his dad helped defeat in WWII. Things only get more complicated when Captain America is thawed out but Tony's always been good with complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Priciest Hot Pocket

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if this story has been done a billion times already but I want to take a crack at it. This takes place during Iron Man 2(which I ~~have admittedly not seen in a long time~~ am currently in the process of rewatching in 30 min chunks over the next couple of weeks, so forgive me if I mess up certain details. I'm trying to reference wikis on the summary but sometimes they don't have all the info you need). Also I'm going mega robotic with the soldier's character, just to warn those who may not be a fan of that sort of interpretation.

So, here was what Tony Stark knew: He'd ordered some of that cutting edge, top of the line product from Hammer Industries-not under the Stark Industries banner, of course, but through a dummy corporation. Literally the CEO of said fake company was Dum-E. After seeing footage of Hammer testing out his own copycat suits in Iran at the Senate hearing-seriously, did no one have a single, creative, original thought anymore?-Tony had another thing to be put on edge about. Because, obviously, he needed more of that in his life what with palladium poisoning and the government trying to take his tech for their own ends and surrendering control of his company to Pepper and so on. Hammer's suits weren't for sale yet and hopefully never would be, but Tony thought it might be worthwhile to catalog, dismantle, and have a ready deterrent for whatever his rival company's latest and greatest was in the event some of it had been developed to work in tandem with said suits.   
  
He could use the distraction from his imminent death, after all.   
  
The man who sold the items to Dum-E's business was named Johnson and carried himself confidently through text. The date of delivery was yesterday afternoon while Tony was busy doing busy person things. The price tag was something spectacular and he'd sent the receipts off to an accountant to verify everything but that was the boring part and he didn't pay much attention to that. It was all delivered to some dockside warehouse in Brooklyn before he had his people bring it back to his neck of the woods and finally it all sat here on the fifty-eighth floor of his office building in Manhattan. Yeah, the tall one that's a block up from Central Park but only because if he owned a building that tall right next to Central Park he wouldn't be able to see _all_ of it without really craning his neck at an awkward, downward angle with his nose to the glass. And he liked the entirety of it, not just three quarters of it.

Here was what Tony Stark didn't know: What the hell was in the big giant metal box that looked like a one-person submarine that was humming sort of loudly and had (probably) mysterious things written on it in Cyrillic letters. He'd stared at it for a minute, then shifted his eyes to the more appropriately sized crates that should be filled with weapons and armor and computery things and whatnot. They were, so that much was correct. But as far as he could remember, nothing he'd ordered should be this large.

The only way to find out what a thing you don't know is is, is to open it and use it and hope you push all the buttons in the right order so that's what Tony did. He asked Jarvis for a translation on the Cyrillic and got back some of the usual 'this side up' and 'fragile' labels. Because who doesn't transport your standard fragile material in a box made with five inch thick steel walls. Or he thought it was steel anyway. It didn't resonate the same when he rapped his knuckles on it-a very intelligent thing to do to a mystery box from a weapons manufacturer marked fragile but he was a very intelligent man.

Some of the other labels were a little more intriguing. Stuff about flow of liquid nitrogen, caution with the cables, if power is lost and backup generator fails, defrost contents at once and follow stand-by protocols. He wondered briefly if he bought some kind of bomb or uranium cores or something but he knew liquid nitrogen wasn't exactly enough bang for radioactive decay's buck. Plus he didn't exactly recall purchasing anything that volatile. That left him with one idea. Some kind of computer or robot, something that burned through an immense amount of energy, but to do what?

"Okay, Jarvis," he said, hands on his hips as he finished contemplating the contents and was eager to open it like a kid on Christmas. "Tell me what you can figure out about thawing this stuff."

"Already done, sir. The process is emblazoned on the side of the tank."

Tony walked around to find it, the raised weirdo moonspeak letters. "Does it say what's in it?" His eyes wandered from the letters to the scratches on the edge of the door. Or gouges, rather. Maybe somebody tried to open the thing with a crowbar and missed the mark a couple of times.

"Not specifically, sir, but the material is organic in nature."

"Organic," Tony muttered. That was pretty low on the list of things he expected to be in the box. Had he been sent a bunch of organs? Why such a heavy-duty container? And the whole stand-by part still didn't make sense in the context of anything organic. "So I just could've gone to Whole Foods for this?"

"Perhaps, if they sold medical equipment and employed MDs."

"So it's _very_ organic," Tony said, brows raising slightly. Whatever it was, it was alive and the intent was to get it through the thawing process also still alive. What a pain in the ass. "Well," he said, tapping on the frosted glass. "We're going to find out if you're worth it."

It was a lot easier to bring the medical stuff to the tank than vice versa so Tony went with that option. He was in the process of having that done when Pepper wandered in. No, she didn't wander. Probably had this exact moment-two thirty-seven p.m.-marked in her schedule as 'make sure Stark isn't killing himself or others with accident-prone robots'. Her eyes found what all the hustle and bustle of the interns moving medical equipment up here was about and she stared almost like she didn't want to believe this thing was in the room. "What on Earth did you buy this time?"

"I don't know but the good news is it's organic, so it'll be healthy. Doesn't appear to meet USDA free-range regulations though so if you have a moral dilemma about that, now's the time to leave."

"What do you mean 'organic'?"

"Something alive. Or previously alive and now in a liquid nitrogen coma. Or dead."

"Tony, there's not a person in there, is there?" She whipped her head around so fast he thought her hair might slice his right off his shoulders.

He shrugged.

"How can you be so flippant about that possibility?"

"How can you be so worried about it when we haven't even gotten the thing open yet?" He waved a hand at her as she pressed her lips together. "Don't worry. I _highly_ doubt it's a person. Cryogenics haven't exactly been perfected yet so the only people who get frozen are dead ones and I doubt they've started putting corpses up for sale. My guess is..." Well, he didn't really have many. Biological agents started to come to mind but again the instructions to put the contents into 'stand-by' mode or whatever made that sound wrong. That and all of the necessary medical equipment was more fit for something a bit larger than a handful of cells in a petri dish. So he said instead, "Mammoths. Of the woolly variety. Maybe found in some glacier."

"What would Hammer Industries be doing with woolly mammoths?" she asked, clearly not buying it.

He shrugged again but felt mildly entertained at the notion of weaponized woolly mammoths. "What would they be doing with a frozen dead guy?" he asked back. "Come on, Pep. I'm sure it's fine. We're about to open it, so you'll see. If you have the time to stick around?"

She looked at him and he felt like a schoolkid making his crush a little too obvious so he cleared his throat. "Well, now I have to know," she said, crossing her arms over her chest, hugging some kind of folder to herself in the process.

"Of course you have to know," Tony said. He glanced around the room which had been completely rearranged by now. The list of needed things wasn't _that_ extensive, really, but it hadn't included one thing Tony thought an organic mystery creature would want most of all upon being hoisted out of a tank of liquid nitrogen, and that was a comfy blanket. He held onto that one personally while a pair of doctors who had repeatedly tried to inform Tony they had no idea about any of this and were doctors, not veterinarians, waited with some obvious agitation by the gurney. Tony only had cots in person size, so if it was a mammoth or something of similar largeness, he'd have to work something else out. Possibly push two cots together, much like a large party of people invading a restaurant whose tables weren't really suited for the entirety of their group.

"Okay, here we go," Tony said under his breath, a little knot of anticipation tying up his stomach. The more he thought about it, the more he hoped it _was_ a mammoth. Some other prehistoric creature would also be acceptable. Could he fashion a suit for a saber toothed tiger? Because that would be pretty badass in a fight. Iron Man and his attack tiger, the Iron Saber. But then again, Tony Stark: mammoth-owner, had a nice ring to it and would look great printed on the cover of tabloids. He already had their cover photo in his head. He'd be strolling through the park in winter time while his adorable, fluffy little pet frolicked in the snow.

He returned his focus to carrying out the instructions as translated by Jarvis. The loud humming of the box got a little quieter and he could see bubbles in the tubes as the liquid nitrogen supply cut off slowly. There were a series of loud clunking noises which he figured were bolts or other locking mechanisms sliding out of place and it made him wonder again why this tank was so heavily secured. He nodded to the pair of dazed interns to go ahead and open the box so they could all find out. Everyone leaned forward whether they realized it or not, even though all they could see now was a very chilly vapor bubbling over the sides of the tank. Tony approached and didn't miss a stunned expression on the face of the intern nearest the tank. So mammoth. So definitely mammoth. He waved his arm to clear the vapor and get a good look and-

Good bye tabloid cover.

It was a person. Which was weird and scary but also intriguing and asked him why why why like a three year old who'd just learned the word. The fog cleared a little more and made the mystery even _more_ intriguing because, hi, yes, glacier man had a metal arm. "Well," he muttered at that because it wasn't just some vague approximation of a human limb like most prosthetics. It was gorgeous. A marvel of engineering. He hardly believed it was real metal at first, maybe some kind of weird paint job, but no. The symmetry with the right arm was exact, and a thousand more questions popped into his head.

"Well what?" Pepper asked a few steps back and Tony froze. Well, _froze_ seemed like such a strong word as he leaned over a man literally encased in ice but language was a funny thing.

"Um," was all he could say for a second. It was enough.

She rushed over to the tank and her brows arched up in a way that told him she wasn't really pleased with what she was seeing. "Tony you said-"

"I speculated. Speculations can be wrong," he said, waving a hand at the body in the tank.

"Why did you buy a person?" she snapped.

"I didn't," he insisted adamantly because he _didn't_. He didn't buy and sell live human beings, or frozen ones either, just to be safe. He had enough bad karma stacked against him and didn't need to risk adding 'human trafficking' to that. "You can check, nowhere on that receipt is there an item marked 'ice cyborg'."

"Do we uh-" one of the doctors asked. The other was staring because how could you not?

"Well, yes," Tony said as if it was obvious.

"What?!" Pepper cried shrilly. "You don't know what you're doing! That guy could be ill with something terminal or-Do you even know how to unfreeze a person because the rest of the modern scientific world doesn't!"

"Luckily he comes with directions. Like a hot pocket."

"Tony I swear if you put this man in some kind of microwave-"

"No, because then the outside will still be all cold but the inside will be like molten lava. Plus, hello, metal arm in a microwave? Day one stuff, Pep. We'll cook him safely in a conventional oven." He said it with a determined nod as the doctors reached in with thick rubber gloves up to the biceps and fished out the man in the box. The reality of the situation seemed to hit everyone at about the same time and the place became instantly more active. The two doctors alone had trouble lifting the guy out. A couple interns rushed for rubber gloves and helped out.

The man's skin was a pale blue color that would look nice on a cake or a flower but less so on a person. He was solidly built, not an ounce of fat on him. One of the doctors clipped a heart rate monitor onto the end of the guy's right index finger. He seemed startled to already be getting a reading. "Um, I've never exactly done this before but um," the doctor stammered, staring a bit at the screen. "I'd think like, he shouldn't have a pulse right out of the ice like that. Or maybe at all, given the whole, frozen...thing."

"This is going to be an afternoon for learning," Tony said, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. The interns grimaced and kept patting down the guy's stiff limbs with towels, brushing away little crystals of ice and moisture.

"So much about this seems very, very wrong," Pepper said in a low voice. She seemed pretty cautious, like getting too close to the guy on the cot wasn't a good idea. Caution was probably warranted where metal armed men were concerned so Tony didn't fault her for it. 

"Eh, it'll be fine. You'll see. The directions make it sound like this happens with some kind of regularity." He thought specifically of the orders to put the man on stand-by in the event of a power failure. There were plenty of questions and he supposed the best way of answering them was to ask the guy being unfrozen. "If he's sick we'll just do it all backwards and pop him back in there until his cure comes along or whatever."

"But why?" she asked. "I mean, why did Hammer have him? And then there's the arm...This doesn't make any sense. And why would they _sell_ him to you? Where's the paperwork on your transaction? I'd be very interested to know if you just committed a serious crime by purchasing a human being."

"I told you, I didn't buy him. Mistakes were made." Tony shrugged. "Too late to worry about it now." Pepper seemed ready to debate everything he'd just said, but she must've noticed Tony's brows tugged together a bit and she followed his gaze to the man on the cot. Had that left arm just twitched? "Especially since he might be waking up already," Tony added, keeping his focus to be certain he hadn't just imagined it.

"Is it really that fast?" she asked in a whisper, like she didn't want to wake the man up. He didn't have an answer for her but he suspected that no, a human being shouldn't be moving ten minutes after being defrosted. The guy should be dead, if anything. Was this really a person? Or some unfinished, extremely lifelike android? There was quiet in the room as they all stared, transfixed by the arm. All five fingers drummed against the cot. Then each joint was flexed. The wrist rolled. Elbow bent. Shoulder rolled. Then there was a kind of whirring noise when all the metal plates snapped shut and it was like watching tall grasses ripple from a sudden gust of wind. Tony recognized it for what it was and he made the little Windows 95 booting up noise, a joke obviously lost on the younger interns. Maybe two seconds after, the guy on the table gasped like he was drowning, back arching off the cot, fingers feebly grasping at the metal beneath it. Tony wasn't exactly sure why, but he put himself between Pepper and the man. He'd be all floppy and weak after being frozen alive so surely he couldn't hurt anyone right away. Then he remembered that whole thing about how the guy shouldn't be alive at all and decided it was best if he stopped making assumptions.

"Sir, are you okay?" one of the doctors asked, a hand on the right arm. The man jerked away and seemed to try to focus but failed.

"You hear us? You understand us?" the other asked. The man's head jerked in that direction now and he blinked a lot.

The guy kept gasping but his hands seemed to relax a little. "A-a-ffirm-mative," he managed to stammer out through uncontrollable shivering. His voice was deceptively soft when taken in the context of his frame and the scary looking scars where the metal arm met the body. Tony had heard of people getting pins in their bones or metal in their hips or whatever, but nothing like this. Most prosthetics were supposed to at least try to work comfortably with the person's body. This looked more like someone had peeled back the man's skin, shoved metal plating underneath, and then slapped the skin back over parts of it. Even if that was a crude interpretation, Tony considered the amount of pain that would come with a procedure where this was the end product and it left him with even more questions. Like was that a _voluntary_ procedure, and if so why? And if not, why the hell?

"Okay, we're gonna warm you up, don't worry," the first doctor said. The guy's eyes rolled around in his head like he couldn't force himself to focus on any one thing and he blinked rapidly. Tony approached, blanket in hand because of course he was right about it being necessary. He handed it over to the doctor, and the guy's eyes went to it immediately. Then they flicked to Tony.

"Hi," Tony said for lack of anything more useful to do. The guy probably wasn't up for a chat just yet but was trying to stammer something out anyway. Tony just shook his head. "You don't have to talk right now with all the coldness and the frost." He waved with one open palm, the man's eyes following the gesture. "God knows I don't have that kind of time," Tony said. "Just get cozy. They'll take care of you and we'll discuss uh, whatever your deal is and then go from there."

The guy was trying so hard to pay attention but it was kind of obvious he didn't understand. There were a few hard blinks, his hands twitched like he wanted to do something with them but wasn't sure what, and he opted for slowly rolling his head to one side and then the other when he didn't get whatever he was looking for. "Jarvis," Pepper said from behind Tony. "The lights, please. I think they're too bright."

"Of course, Miss Potts." And the lights went low without leaving the doctors to work in the dark. The mismatched pair of hands stilled for a moment before settling back down.

"Tony." He took his eyes off the guy/potential android and turned them to Pepper who'd said his name in a weird tone that was some mix of all the authority in the world, some uncertainty, and a pinch of pity. "Can we talk?"


	2. What Flavor?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Pepper have a chat about the man in the box, and Tony learns some unhappy things about the mystery cyborg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am not a doctor or psychologist. I have little knowledge on these subjects and also woefully small free time that I like to spend on writing...I hope that if I have written something that is just too unbelievable that it could be pointed out and with suggestions or helpful links that could help me make something better? :) Thank you for understanding(and for reading!!)

It turned out 'talking' with Pepper this time was really more of an ethics lecture that he half paid attention to because he was checking his palladium levels again underneath the desk in the room down the hall from the mystery cyborg. They weren't getting better, by the way, and he was still racking his brain trying to figure out how to remedy that. If it was even possible. Which he was beginning to suspect but didn't want to acknowledge because who wanted to know they were dying? He'd caught the words human rights violation a couple of times and that drew him out of contemplating one problem and into another. Finally he had to throw up his hands and say, "Fine, I surrender. But what do you _do_ with something like this, Pep? Hammer just shipped us a man in a box by complete accident. Who do you take that to? Because it sounds a little large for the Better Business Bureau."

"First we verify that you didn't purchase that man. I've already asked Miss Rushman to retrieve all the hardcopies of the transactions from your accountants. Which, by the way, setting up the fake corporation for the purchase was a great way to make this even more complicated, so thank you. I'm beginning to wonder if all of this is a test to see if I'm fit to run your business."

"Never too late to start sucking up to the teacher for extra credit assignments."

She stared at him in that 'I can't believe you just said that but actually wait yes I can' way, pressing her lips together before continuing. "Second, we speak with the man. About him, about Hammer. It'll make us look better if we try to figure out who he is, what he wants, where he _actually_ belongs, in the event that there's any kind of trial. Which I'd imagine there would be if Hammer is involved in human trafficking. If we can have the gentleman-" Tony snorted because the word gentleman, to him, conjured up dapper guys in fitted suits and expensive haircuts, not cavemen recently melted from glaciers in the future. Glaciers _from_ the future. Something quip metal arm ice, whatever. "-on record as saying we haven't held him here against his will, it could help us immensely."

"What do you want me to ask the guy? 'Do you get homesick when you see a frozen pizza?'"

"Tony, this is serious. Do you know how this looks right now?"

Of course it was serious. Of course he knew it looked like he'd bought a human being for God knew what reason. And of course he was already trying to figure out the best way to get information about this out of Hammer. Monaco kept coming back to mind. Hammer would be there, and it was going to be a crowded, well-publicized event so it minimized the chances of things turning too ugly. Hammer was a lot of things, including stupid, but he probably wouldn't want the impact on his image that would come with causing a ruckus. Tony never took issue with that, though, so for once, a thing was working in his favor. He just needed to figure out the right questions.

Instead of saying anything that would show Pepper he was as forward thinking an individual as he was, Tony responded to her question, "Chilly with a chance of rust if it snows."

"It looks like you just committed a serious crime and then transferred control of your company to me to avoid prosecution for a purchase made by Stark Industries under a fake name. It looks like you knew what you were buying and anticipated the backlash. So we need to get control of this situation before something gets out and the media has control instead."

"Staff is pretty well-versed in that whole nondisclosure thing. Seems like this would fall under that umbrella."

"Yes but we can't rely on _everyone_ being quiet about this."

"Pardon the interruption," came Jarvis' voice. "But Miss Rushman is here with the requested documents."

"Let her in, please," Pepper said without looking back at the door, eyes still trained on Tony. "This is a delicate situation. Please, _please_ handle it with care."

"Those _were_ the directions on the box." He flicked his eyes over to his gorgeous new assistant-because as a billionaire you always needed one of those, even if you weren't CEO of anything anymore. He stood as she approached, her confident gait evident in the clack clack clack of her heels on the floor. Sort of like Pepper but somehow more...

What did it say about his bedroom interests that the word _lethal_ was coming to mind first?

"Your receipts for the Hammer Industries purchase," she said, holding them out to him. He made exceptions about being handed things when the one doing the handing was pretty much sex incarnate.

"Thank you," he said, eyes roving over the papers. And _only_ the papers because he was a serious businessman. But then he looked up at her and asked, "Hey you wanna see something freaky?"

"Tony, remember what we said about certain other lawsuits-" Pepper said in that sharp but polite way she'd perfected over the years. The way that said 'I really want to kick you in the face but I'm a professional and these shoes cost too much to stain with your blood'.

"I'm talking about the Frost Miser. What did you think I was talking about?" he asked suspiciously and Pepper shook her head at him. She didn't blush often but he caught her cheeks going a little red.

"Frost Miser? A little early for Christmas movies, isn't it Mr. Stark?" Natalie asked. She didn't glance down at the documents in his hand but he figured she had plenty of time to snoop on her way up. Even if she did, it didn't matter. Like Pepper was saying, transparency was their newest goal. Time to turn iron into saran wrap.

"It is _never_ too early for Christmas movies. I start January 1st and never stop," he said, eyes searching the pages. It all looked normal to him but then he spotted the item that didn't belong. It was easy because it was the one with the most figures. Ten of them, in fact. Stark Industries did pretty well for itself, but a purchase like that was just unsustainable and there was no way that much money had come out of any accounts. He would've been alerted to it pretty quickly. "But unfortunately I'm talking about J186629 and J186629 accessories. Apparently." He tapped it and held it out to Pepper and she sighed.

"You did. You really bought a human being."

"I don't recall doing so. It's a mistake. Like when they hit the button for parsley instead of cilantro at the grocery store."

"You don't get _arrested_ for confusing those two!" Pepper said, snatching the papers away. "It's going to be next to impossible to convince a court that this purchase was accidental given the shady way you conducted it!"

"I was trying to scope out my competition! I didn't know he'd send me a real life Bionic Commando!"

Tony and Pepper were too busy arguing to notice the way Natalie's eyes briefly widened at the statement. It was barely half a second before she regained composure and asked, a slight laugh in her voice, "A bionic commando? What kind of toys did you buy, Mr. Stark?"

"Oh, wouldn't you like to know what kind of toys I buy," he said back and Pepper sighed loudly and he remembered _lawsuit._ "Fun ones," he said quickly. "The latest and greatest being a frozen guy with a metal arm."

Natalie nodded slowly and looked at him like he was telling a dumb joke. "Right."

Tony huffed and put a hand to his hip. "You don't believe me."

"The courts aren't going to either," Pepper muttered. She turned to Natalie and offered a weary smile. "Thank you for getting these. That's all I need for now but I'm _sure_ we're going to be very busy soon. I'll contact you."

Natalie nodded again, took a step back, and then stopped. Tony briefly thought this might be the moment she declared her intense and burning desire for him but then she said, "Does...Is there really a man with a metal arm here?" She said it in a tone of voice that suggested she didn't quite believe it but was slightly open to the possibility and he wondered what other possibilities she was open to.

Tony held up a finger to her as he dug out his phone. "Jarvis, bring up the lab's feed. Papa bear needs to check on baby bear." Once the image appeared on his phone he flicked the device once in the direction of the television. Pepper and Natalie turned their heads to observe. "Oh look he's sitting up already. My they grow so fast," Tony said. The mystery man was indeed sitting upright on the cot. One of the doctors was checking his blood pressure and the man just stared straight ahead, no indication of how he felt about being thawed out and waking up here. Or if he even knew where 'here' was.

"Where did you find him?" Natalie asked in a low voice. Disbelief. Shock. It was to be expected, Tony supposed. He glanced at her and she was staring at the screen and he'd never seen her with such an expression of concern. He didn't expect a woman like her to be shocked by much of anything, given the way she seemed to be the one always doing the shocking. Like with the Latin and the smackdown she'd lain on Happy the other day. But presented with an image like the one on the screen, he'd find it weirder if she _wasn't_ surprised.

"I bought him. By accident, of course, because one does not-usually- _buy_ people. And if I _were_ to ever buy someone they'd be of the 'two x chromosomes' variety. Not that I would do that though. Because I don't need to solicit prostitution. And it's illegal." He needed to shut up. "Not that he's a prostitute." He really needed to shut up. "But I guess that's still a possibility since we don't know _what_ he is." _Why_ couldn't he stop talking. "I just don't suspect he's using that arm for-"

"Tony," Pepper said.

Shutting up.

"You bought him from Hammer?" Natalie asked. She seemed to refuse to take her eyes off the screen and Tony supposed he was secure enough in his masculinity to admit that if someone cleaned the guy up a little he was a bit dreamy. Girls were into long hair and scruff these days. Unkempt hobos. Not a line Tony was willing to cross. Not that he needed to. Money was _always_ attractive. But the longer he studied Natalie's expression, the more he realized she wasn't making googly eyes at the guy on the screen. It was almost like she was afraid of him.

"Accidentally," Tony said again. Then he held his chin in his hand and tapped his lips with a finger. "You seem tense." _Lawsuit lawsuit_ **.**

Natalie shrugged. "Not every day you see something like this," she said, calmly.

Tony turned his eyes back to the screen where he could hear the doctors in the middle of some test. "...Jarvis if you could project a line on the floor a few meters long for the patient to walk..." He watched the mystery man slide off the cot and walk the projected line with halting, jerky movements, almost like he was unused to having legs. He never fell though which was a little impressive. Who knew how long he'd been frozen, when the last time he'd actually used any of his muscles was. Tony closed the feed and Natalie watched the blank screen a bit longer before ducking out of the room. He turned his eyes to Pepper instead and asked, "So. What kind of chat with the robot did you want me to have?"

As always, she came prepared. It'd been maybe half an hour between the time Tony left the guy in the lab and meeting with Pepper. How had she come up with anything to be prepared _with_? He could've kicked himself for asking. She was Pepper, that's how. She opened her folder and there was a neatly printed and composed list of questions in bullet point form. Pretty basic things to ask the guy. Name, hometown, any specific reason you were in a block of ice, that sort of thing. "Just get him to answer these. Tell him he's free to go home, if that's what he wants, that we can help him get to where he wants to go, or if he is some kind of terminally ill person, we can um, refreeze him."

"He's gonna be all tough and chewy next time someone takes him out, though," Tony said. But he let his eyes reread that part of the script she'd written for him. It was time to let her know what he'd been thinking about while she'd been talking to him about all the reasons it was unethical to buy people. "I don't think he's in there because he's ill."

"How could you know that?" Pepper asked.

He took the page from her and laid it flat on the desk. "Jarvis, digitize this for me," he said. Then he looked back at Pepper. "You saw him. When you think _ill_ do you think 'guy built like a champion MMA fighter'? Then there's the arm. You don't waste tech like that on a guy who's going to die from a disease. And think of how quickly he woke up from being frozen _._ Most people _never_ wake up from something like that. He was moving within fifteen minutes. That's not the response of a failing immune system or a weakening body." He held back that he thought it was the response of an enhanced person. Whether by natural mutation or some kind of experimenting, it seemed likely to Tony that this guy was not an average person, even if you discounted the arm.

Pepper considered the information and maybe she'd even been thinking it herself before he vocalized it. "It's one possibility. We need to consider as many as we can, just to be safe." Then she shifted her weight like-No. It wasn't possible. No way was Pepper Potts _uncomfortable._

"Something the matter?"

She gawked at him like she wanted to say _only a million and a half things today, Tony, so that's a good day._ But she reset her face closer to neutral and shrugged. "It's just very bizarre. If he's not sick, why was he in there? Why would he _let_ someone put him in there? Or...did he?"

He'd been considering that since he'd debated with himself whether or not the guy was sick. What other reasons does one have for willingly freezing themselves? Maybe it was an extreme conclusion to jump to. But alternatives fell apart pretty quickly when he thought about them. The storage treatment combined with the arm and the fact that he'd been sold by an arms' dealer didn't make the picture look any prettier. Were they now the proud owners of a victim of human experimentation? Or someone who was insane enough to volunteer? He picked his tablet off the desk and waved it in one hand. "That's what I'm going to find out soon enough."

* * *

The crew was in the middle of some kind of psychological evaluation when Tony eventually made his way back to the room. The guy didn't even look up at him when he entered, entirely focused on the person speaking with him. The tone of voice was calm, gentle, unassuming. From his place on the other side of the room, Tony couldn't really make out any words.

One of the two main physicians came to him first and he looked almost pale. "Well," he said. "I guess there's one up side. He wasn't a mammoth, so less guesswork."

Tony exhaled dramatically. "Yeah but what could've been, right?" He crossed his arms over his chest. "What can you tell me about him?"

"Well the first thing we noticed-I mean besides the arm-is the recovery speed. Aside from the short recovery period out of the ice, the mark left from where we'd drawn blood had closed up before we even had a chance to bandage it. Both of these are obviously highly unusual reactions."

"So he heals fast."

The physician nodded. "Then we have the results of the blood test. He's in perfect health-"

"That's good."

"-despite being pumped full of enough cryoprotectant to kill a horse."

"That's...also good?" Tony asked because it was good the guy wasn't dead but bizarre that he _wasn't_ dead.

"I guess," the doctor said with a shrug. "There were a few other compounds. A cocktail of sedatives that should, again, have killed him. We think he might have an incredibly fast metabolism. Superhuman, if you will. Something that hasn't been seen in anyone else except-"

Tony said it with a bored sigh because he knew. He knew all too well. "Captain America."

"Steven Rogers, yes. He has similarly dense muscle fibers. So even though he might not look it, he could probably-"

"Lift a motorcycle being ridden by three USO dancers over his head?" Tony offered. He'd been maybe the only kid growing up _not_ entranced by the old tapes of Captain America and his feats of super-strength. The only kid who didn't own all the comics and didn't follow the cartoons and didn't ever in his life want to be the guy for Halloween. Captain America was dead, had been for decades, and he followed Tony around like the most ridiculously dressed ghost.

"Um, that's extremely specific, but yes, probably. He's stronger than he looks, is what I was getting at."

"So somebody else has a super soldier serum." Hammer. No. That was impossible. Hammer couldn't engineer his way out of a wet paper bag, and his alleged 'expertise' was in robotics, not biology or chemistry. Then maybe Hammer purchased the serum. Or the guy in the box. Either way that left the question of who had figured out a serum that the rest of the scientific community hadn't been able to for the past seven decades. And beyond that, if someone had figured it out, they kept it a tightly guarded secret, and that couldn't be good.

"That must be the case because it's the only thing that explains why this man is the way he is. And that's just the physical part," the doctor said. He gestured to someone and Tony followed his gaze.

The woman who'd been speaking with the super soldier glanced up from her sheaf of papers. She headed over to them, a serious expression on her face but still she extended her hand to Tony. "Mr. Stark," she said. He took it and nodded, allowing for her to continue. "I-" She stopped and shook her head. "I'm honestly at a loss with this man. I've never spoken to someone who exhibits such a complete detachment from the self."

"You know, Jarivs isn't up to date on the current psychobabble," Tony said, waving his hands in circles around each other. "Maybe you should explain it. For him."

"The man doesn't recognize himself as having any agency. For instance, if I ask you if you want a piece of gum, what would you say?"

"What flavor?" Tony asked.

The woman sighed a little. "You'd say yes or no, right?"

"Sure."

Then she shook her head. "Not him. Asking him what he wants results in him telling you to defer to a superior, a, um, handler or director, were the specific terms he used. It's like he isn't capable of making decisions for himself, of wanting something for himself. When asked how he feels about things, he denies having any feelings. At all. About anything."

"Um, have you tried videos of puppies with casts? That always works on Miss Potts," Tony offered.

"Mr. Stark, there is something deeply wrong with this man. We tried to ask him if he has a preferred hospital and he just told me to defer to the director. We asked if he wants us to contact his family, and he denied having one."

"Maybe they disowned him. Anti-cyborg assholes."

"He denied being _born._ He claims he was made in a lab."

Tony wanted to say that wasn't possible. Human cloning was not a thing yet, but then again, neither was successful cryogenics. Whoever did whatever to this guy didn't seem to care much about rules when it came to what should and shouldn't be possible. Instead he shrugged, trying still to find a simpler answer. "So he's delusional."

"I've worked with a lot of people with a lot of different illnesses and problems," she said and he knew that was true since he'd hand-selected her as one of two company psychologists. Stark Industries was an enormous company, and on-site clinics and other assorted health-related resources were becoming more common in large workplaces. He had to assume, though, that she'd never expected to have to counsel a patient quite like this one in her tenure here. "And while part of me wants to write this off as delusions, another part of me can't. These statements of his, combined with the complete lack of affect, the lack of recognition of his own personhood, his requests for superiors and strict adherence to their orders, and his physical condition, I-" She shook her head slowly, like the thought was too horrific to complete. "I'm tentatively suggesting that this is not a mental illness. This is...learned behavior. Some kind of purposeful conditioning."

"So you think someone _made_ him act like this?" Tony asked. Maybe he still wasn't getting the weirdness of the guy's behavior. But he had his own interview scheduled next, so he'd get a handle on it soon enough.

She nodded slowly. "I've already suggested more thorough brain imaging scans and some test on his neurochemistry just to rule out the possibility of illness, or brain damage. I just-given what the medical team has found regarding his immune system and healing factor, and what we know of Rogers' biology, I find myself doubting that anything wrong with him is rooted in something physical. That plus the context of how you, um, acquired him through an arms' dealer..." She didn't finish, instead waving a hand back at the guy and letting it drop by her side.

Tony processed the medical update with a slow nod, eyes wandering to the weirdo in question. He was a little startled to find him staring back at him intensely, like he was reading him. Being under that gaze made it a little difficult to think. So they had a super soldier. With a metal arm. Who might possibly be conditioned into thinking he's not a person. Or who's just insane, one of the two. Either one didn't seem particularly palatable, but at least with mental illness, they had a jumping off point. Pills, therapy, et cetera. That was also more reassuring because the alternative was frightening. The alternative meant someone intentionally depriving someone of their own humanity. And no one ever did that for any good reason, so far as Tony knew. This information definitely threw a wrench in his plans to shuffle this guy out the door and into the arms of whatever organization could help him find his place in society best. Because if someone did all this to this guy, spent the time, resources, and money to turn a human being into a subservient machine, were they really going to just let him wander away from them?

He rolled his shoulders in his sockets and nodded at the pair of doctors. "Thanks for the input. You're all free to take a break." He nodded again, this time to the cyborg guy. "I'm going to have a talk with our new friend."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a [tumblr](http://tchakaflocka.tumblr.com) now and would love to meet you there! :))


	3. Sunny Delight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha makes a brief report to Fury, and Tony interviews his newest acquisition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I may have forgotten that initially, Tony Stark lived in California. I already set the story in New York. I'll try to reconcile this if I can figure out how but hopefully that deviation from IM2 is not too severe for the moment. Forgive me! :))

"There's a problem with Stark." She wanted to laugh wryly immediately after she said it because _one_ problem? But she was a professional and she focused on the aspect of her current work assignment that was more pressing than all of Tony Stark's ego, guilt complex, mental problems, and daddy issues combined.

"What is it?" Fury asked. She was mildly pleased he didn't insult her competence by asking if the line is secure, if she was outside of Jarvis' sphere of observation.

"Remember the job in '09, Odessa?"

"I have a feeling I'm not going to like what you're about to tell me."

"No."

Fury must have briefly held the phone away from his ear. She heard cursing, but it was far away, muffled slightly. "You're _sure_ it's him?"

"He isn't the kind of guy you forget." She wasn't insulted. Something this big, she'd want to be absolutely certain about every aspect of it before acting.

"What's he doing with Stark?"

"He was sent along with a shipment of other tech and weapons from Hammer Industries. In cryo."

There was a brief silence on the other end while Fury processed the information. There was woefully little information on the Winter Soldier. SHIELD hadn't believed he really even existed until she'd been left alive to tell them otherwise. She'd given them whatever she could remember about him from the Red Room. His tenure there was brief but memorable and she didn't have much to say that was useful to them in terms of finding him. He'd looked about thirty when he came to train her and the other girls, and didn't look a day older when she saw him again years later. She never knew what kept him from aging until she'd seen the video feed on Stark's television. 

"Are you up for sticking this one out, or do we need to send someone else in?" Fury asked. "He's seen you before, so if he sets eyes on you and informs Stark of who you actually are, things could get messy. Not to mention he might try to finish the job."

Part of her wanted to snatch at the opportunity to run without a second thought for reasons beyond keeping her cover. She'd seen the Soldier literally tear a man apart limb from limb. Desensitization training, they'd called it, when she and the other girls had been forced to watch him murder over and over until they didn't blink when told ordered to kill. To say the Soldier left her with some baggage was a bit of an understatement, and she knew no one would think she was a coward or incapable if she agreed to a reassignment now. 

But another part of her believed the Soldier was just like herself and the other Widows-subservient. Brainwashed. The world shown to them through very narrow lenses. He'd never given orders, only taken them, and how did someone so powerful get put into a position like that? If that was true, had he ever been given the opportunity she had to get out? Maybe this was her chance to undo some of what she'd done. Even if Clint told her she couldn't be held accountable for her actions, it wasn't how she felt. Joining SHIELD had just been one step of many. This could be another. But it would require verifying her hunch about the Soldier's autonomy, and doing so without blowing her cover to Stark or getting killed in the process. "No. I'll stay on it. Just advise me on how you want me to proceed."

"Does Stark know what he has?"

"No. But he's thawed him out. Got doctors speaking with him and nothing's happened yet," she answered.

"Alright. Stay on Stark. Figure out what he thinks is going on. Keep the other guy at arms' length and don't let him see you. If he runs, you do _not_ pursue. You understand?"

"Got it."

"I'm going to work out an end game here. See if we can't eliminate one more threat from the playing field. I'll contact you soon with news."

"Understood."

* * *

"Okay frosty, let's dish," Tony said, dropping into his chair. The spinning kind, with lumbar support, the works. He let the folder with the x-rays and test results and notes drop against the desk. "Why do you have all this metal crap in you?"

The other guy stared but said nothing.

"Do you understand me?" Tony asked. He thought briefly that maybe the guy didn't speak English. But then he'd made it through all of the doctor's instructions and the psychiatrist's interviews. And he'd said 'affirmative' soon after he'd woken up. Which of course was the sort of thing most people were itching to say after being frozen for any given period of time instead of more outlandish alternatives like 'what the fuck' or 'how am I alive' or even just incoherent screaming.

"Yes, sir."

"Okay, good. Baby steps." Tony pulled one of the x-rays out, the one of the rib cage, and he held it up where the other guy could see it. "That's your rib cage. On this side," he drew a finger over the right half, "we have a nice, happy, normal family of ribs. Dad just got a promotion at the plant. Mom's brownies killed it at the bake sale. Junior just made varsity and so on and so forth, you know how it goes." The guy stared some more telling Tony that no, he didn't, but that hadn't stopped Tony before and it wouldn't now. "And on _this_ side," he traced a line over the left half this time, "we have the, uh, the kids from the wrong side of the tracks. I think they're calling them the 'urban youth' nowadays, whatever that means." He pointed one at a time at each of the ribs that were coated or replaced entirely with some kind of metal, lightweight and extremely durable, like the arm, if initial scans were accurate. "So, what I'd like best of all, is if you told me why some of your bones are metal."

"It is not necessary for a weapon to know what it is made of."

Apparently being frozen gave you the weirdest ADHD ever, Tony decided. The psychiatrist may have thought brain scans would rule out damage but he was starting to think she was wrong. Would this guy be able to follow a conversation? "Okay, that's nice. But back on track here." Tony tapped the x-ray again.

"It does not have the requested information."

"What doesn't have the requested information?" Tony double-checked what he was holding and yes, it was still an image only Mengele could be proud of.

"The asset."

"What's the asset?"

"It."

"It _what_?"

"Is the asset."

"Ugh what is-"

"Sir, if I may," Jarvis cut in. "It appears that the gentleman is referring to himself in the third person. _He_ is the it and the asset."

"Um, okay..." Tony said, setting down the x-ray because this was a conversation that was going to require some gesturing. The psychiatrist said the guy didn't acknowledge himself, but this was definitely not what Tony had been expecting based on that statement. "Why..." His hands spread but then he shook his head and brought them back together. "Who talks like that?"

"Apparently him, sir."

"So helpful, Jarvis." Tony rolled his eyes in a conspiratorial manner, as if to include the other guy in the joke. But he just stared back in that blank, creepy, brain dead way and it was difficult to even look at him. Tony had seen victims of trauma. Hard as he'd tried to deny he had problems after Afghanistan, his was a busy mind and he did his homework on PTSD. He'd seen soldiers, children who'd grown up in war zones, people who'd been through a lot worse than him. None of them had eyes as empty as this. He'd never seen a lobotomy patient though.

So the guy needed help, mentally. A ton of it. They had the one psychologist on staff, mainly for HR stuff. To give employees the option to speak to someone if they needed it. He was kind of thinking this might be a project too large for her on her own, so he said, "Can we get an in-house appointment with a psychologist for the gentleman from the box? Psychiatrist? Maybe both? Whichever one is the right one to um, turn the 'it' to an 'I' because that's, yeah, not something I want to get used to." He wasn't sure how long the guy would be staying, given the bizarre nature of how he'd gotten here, but it never hurt to be prepared.

"I'll compile a list now, sir."

"Thanks. Okay, you, um," Tony stabbed his finger at the air in the direction of the guy, "metalloid-American." The guy never took his eyes off Tony so he couldn't say he'd refocused when he spoke directly to him. "How do you feel about speaking to a psychologist?"

"It does not feel."

"Oh  _you_ are going to make them earn their paycheck," Tony muttered, sitting back. "I'm trying to ask you if you'd agree to speak with a doctor."

The other guy stared _some more_ but this time with the smallest hint of uncertainty. "You are its handler."

It was said as a statement but given that tiny uncertainty, Tony thought it could be interpreted as a question. Maybe the first one this miracle of modern medicine had asked even if he hadn't _really_ asked. So Tony needed an answer. He'd learned a lot from television and one lesson he'd taken away was that if someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes. So of course by extension, when a cyborg asks if you are his handler, you say, as Tony did, "Yes. Yes I am."

The other guy stood up a little straighter, eyes wandering the room briefly before he blinked and returned all of that intense focus to Tony. So now he knew what a mouse felt like before a hawk scooped it up and ate it. "It must first receive confirmation from the director of a change in command."

"Who's that?"

There was another silence and every single thing this guy said seemed to first be dragged through an entire obstacle course before it made it from his brain to his mouth. "It must receive confirmation. From the director." He looked around the room like this director was playing hide and seek, just waiting to be found. The fact that he wasn't there at all seemed to just confuse the guy. Not that he needed some new puzzle for that to happen.

"Pretty sure your director isn't here," Tony answered.

The guy stared at him again. He was good at that. "It requires the director's location."

Tony sighed and sat back in his chair. He had no idea what the hell was going on right now, or why Hammer had this cyborg stuck in a tank, or why said cyborg referred to himself as 'it', or what said cyborg needed a 'handler' and 'director' for. But he was willing to bet it was not for any good reason so he said, "You don't have a director anymore."

The other guy looked like this was the most impossible thing on the planet. Tony thought about breaking the news about Santa Claus next, but surely that was too much trauma for one mind to bear. "It requires a director."

Tony should've figured director ranked higher than handler but he wasn't raised in Queen Frostine's wonderland where I's were its and people had cybernetic limbs so he wasn't going to be too hard on himself. Maybe he should've convinced the guy there was neither a handler nor a director. But both of these terms, to Tony, implied this guy needed some significant degree of oversight. It wasn't that he got off on being in that much control of another person, but he had to start somewhere with this bizarre situation. Being close to the top seemed like the best place. If the guy  _needed_ someone to be in charge, Tony could be that until they figured out how to get him to the proper authorities.   
  
"Fine, I'll admit it. I am a package deal, two in one, handler and director," Tony said, scrolling lazily through the more detailed version of the report the medical team had assembled. The really weird report. Like how exactly the arm fit into the guy's body. The funky little thing in his brain that seemed built an awful lot like a tiny wireless device that corresponded with a piece inside of the arm which gave Tony a sneaking suspicion that the guy could manipulate the limb even if it wasn't directly attached to him and that was probably the creepiest but also coolest thing ever. The aforementioned ribs and other handful of bones in the torso coated in metal. "Listen, what's your name? I don't uh-Nobody sent me any info on you so we're kind of touch and go right now."

"Touch and go," the guy whispered, staring at Tony. He seemed to still be getting over the shock of losing his old director.

"Um yeah. Name?"

"It has no name." The guy looked around the room again. "Names are personal and there is no place for personal satisfaction in the new world order."

Tony pushed up his lip with the end of his pen while he listened to the guy talk and let slip a drawn out 'uhhhhuh' on his next exhale. "Okay. Your new name is Sunny Delight. Because you're just so damn cheerful and sweet. Sunny for short will be fine, by the way. Now, let's move on to some of the more interesting questions like the arm. What the hell?"

Sunny blinked once, slowly. "It requires clarification."

"The arm. What's with it? Why is it there? What's it made of? Where do I get one? Not for myself because I kind of like my arms the way they are but just, you know, if I _were_ in the market for a metal arm-Who's your arm guy, is what I'm getting at, I guess."

More staring.

"Do you have any idea where you are right now or who you are or of anything, at all?"

"It is designated The Winter Soldier." Then there was the smallest hesitation, a hint of confusion, and the uncertain appendage, "...slash Sunny Delight."

Somehow the soldier part made sense-and, he supposed, given the whole ice box thing, the winter part did too. He was definitely an in-shape individual, solidly built but not bulky. The guy apparently had muscle fibers that were packed more densely than your standard issue human. So even if the guy didn't _look_ as beefy as Schwarzenegger, he was probably twice as strong. If not more. The kind of thing that had only been observed in a one Captain America, seventy years ago. And this was definitely _not_ Captain America back from the dead. "Oh so you do have a name. Just a long, weird one."

"Designations."

Tony scoffed at the correction and twirled his pen between his fingers as he looked down at his tablet. Pepper had drafted up a bunch of standard questions and he was supposed to ask them. "Okay, got nowhere on the name thing. How about, where are you from?"

Sunny looked around the room again but more in the direction of where the lab was. "It was created in a joint Soviet-German procedure in Switzerland in order to better enforce the will of HYDRA and bring peace to the world."

It was finally Tony's turn to stare at something the other guy had said. "HYDRA. Like, the super-Nazis."

"HYDRA will bring order where there is chaos and only then can peace flourish."

Tony studied Sunny a little longer. He looked young. Definitely under thirty or just around there. Point being, he'd have been a kid when the Soviet Union was still a thing, unless the cryo stuff was ongoing. But this kind of technology, the tank and resuscitation procedure that the rest of the world hadn't figured out yet, plus the metal arm, all seemed too recent for the guy to have been frozen too far back in the past. Beyond that, HYDRA hadn't been a thing since World War II and there was no way this guy was frozen back then. "How old are you?" Tony asked.

"Its age is irrelevant to its functioning if properly stored and maintained."

Okay, another strike. Tony changed directions. "You mention being 'created'. Are you not human?" This wasn't on the docket but it wasn't the kind of question he supposed Pepper was anticipating anyone having to ask. Most people just kind of _know_ they're people. But apparently Descartes' cogito ergo sum did a number on this guy in his intro class. 

"The Winter Soldier is not a person."

Tony pressed his lips together at the weird response but what about this guy hadn't been weird? "You look pretty human on these x-rays and brain scans and the rest. That whole blood and squishy innards thing is pretty telling too. Even your fish tank said you were organic. Who told you that you weren't human?"

"It is a weapon," Sunny seemed to assert that quite aggressively, like he wanted to make it clear there was no grey area. "It is HYDRA's weapon."

"I'm gonna go with 'HYDRA told you you weren't human'," Tony said, spinning once in his chair. Sunny's eyes followed him as he went. "Why were you sold to me by Hammer Industries if you, uh, 'belong'," here he emphasized the word with air quotes and had to stop himself from bursting into laughter as Sunny mimicked the action, completely mystified, "to HYDRA?"

"It requires clarification," Sunny said.

"Well, that makes two of us. Do you know what Hammer Industries is?"

"No sir."

"Well, they apparently know _you_ well enough to sell you. Like a rack of chrome plated ribs or something." He muttered the last part under his breath, a little disgusted. He struggled to keep his questions all in a neat order because God knew the guy couldn't handle them if he spat them all out at once. Like why did Hammer have him and why was he calling himself a weapon and why did he refuse to acknowledge his own personhood and why didn't he seem to care that he was frozen in a box and shipped around like this? "Are you really _okay_ with that?" Tony asked finally because he couldn't help it.

"It is functioning at one hundred percent capacity. No malfunctions to report."

"Yech. That's-we're going to have to work on that. It's-well, it's weird. The way you talk."

Sunny said something in Russian and Jarvis translated, "He's asking if you would prefer he spoke Russian."

Tony smirked a little and wondered if the guy had a sense of humor after all. But then he saw the confusion and blankness and knew Sunny really just didn't know what else Tony might mean about 'the way you talk'. "No, English is fine. So you're from Russia?"

"No, sir," Sunny said. Then his eyes narrowed. "Yes, sir."

"Very informative. Do you know where you are right now?" Tony asked, getting back to Pepper's list.

"No, sir."

"New York," Tony answered to no visible reaction. "Do you know what year it is?"

"2004."

"Mm, no. It's 2010." Again there was no visible reaction even though it seemed to Tony like a revelation worth being shocked by. "Why don't you walk me through an average day in the life of Sunny Delight?"

"An itinerary." It was said more for clarification than anything else so Tony nodded. "Itineraries are provided by its superiors. It is unable to independently draft an itinerary though it is permitted to adapt its own in field settings."

Tony sighed and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "What do you _do_ for HYDRA, Sunny?"

"It is a weapon. It eliminates potential opposition in order to pave the way for a more peaceful future."

His eyes settled on the metal arm and he took in, really absorbed, what the other guy was saying about being 'a weapon'. Tony's blood ran cold and he was quiet for a moment. Sunny here had just informed him that not only did HYDRA still possibly exist in some fashion but that Hammer apparently had some involvement with them and Sunny was their pet assassin. Well, maybe not 'pet'. Most people didn't keep their pets in the freezer. Then again, HYDRA. "You get frozen often?" he asked. He needed information while Sunny was still willing to give it. Tony couldn't be sure how long it'd be before Sunny realized Tony wasn't HYDRA. But there was the possibility, however slight, that he wouldn't realize that at all if he was taken in and out of cryo often enough. Given that his last foray into the world might've been six years ago, it seemed worth a shot.

"It is returned to storage after each assignment."

"So you were last, uh, taken out in 2004?" Tony asked. Storage. What had this guy agreed to have done to him to make him talk like this? And why was it deemed necessary? That awful thought was creeping in again, the idea that this was not a willing participant in whatever happened to him and it made him sick.

"Affirmative."

"And before that?"

"2002."

"And before that?"

"1998."

Tony pressed for more dates and was a little unsure if he believed it. The earliest 'assignment' Sunny could remember was in 1983. Asking about his life before that yielded no pertinent information since what Sunny knew seemed tightly controlled and why wouldn't it be? If you've smashed someone's brain to pieces, you don't do it to give them the resources to patch it back together. The big question for him, still, was whether Sunny did all of that voluntarily or not. HYDRA was weird as hell, so it was entirely possible one of them was happy to have their arm torn off and the memory centers of their brains fried. But then if they were that dedicated to HYDRA, why would it be necessary to fiddle with their brain at all? He was definitely starting to inch towards the 'involuntary' camp and it was horrifying so he couldn't think about it for too long.

He hadn't noticed any real pattern with the dates. It wasn't a matter of pulling the guy out of the freezer every so many years like clockwork. It seemed sporadic. Which worked in Tony's favor. This probably wasn't the first time Sunny woke up to unfamiliar faces so he had to run with that and hope it worked. Like usual. "Jarvis, cut this next part from the record."

"Of course, sir."

Tony leaned forward in his chair, elbows resting on his knees. Sunny gave no visible reaction. "So, you don't recognize me?"

"No, sir."

"Alright I suppose my ego can handle that. But only because you have a decent excuse what with the cryo thing." He waved a hand which Sunny followed with his eyes before returning his gaze to Tony's face. "Tony Stark. The building your standing in belongs to Stark Industries."

"The Starks are subversives and potential enemies of HYDRA," Sunny said and for the first time Tony was nervous. Sunny's left arm made a noise, servos whirring, plates tightening along with his fist.

But Tony had an imagination. He knew how to run with things. He waved a finger. "It's been six years since you were let out of the box, Sunny. A lot's changed since then. I've come to an agreement with HYDRA." It was clear whatever loyalty to the organization had been ingrained in the guy wasn't going to be hand-waved away, so as much as it disgusted him, Tony had to use it. The alternative was making a metal-armed super-assassin think of him as an enemy and that wouldn't end well for anyone. "A truce. We made a deal." He recalled the way Sunny called himself a weapon and went for it. He was already going to hell, so why not? "Weapon for weapon. I gave them some things they were interested in, they gave me some things I was interested in. You, my friend, were at the top of that list. Understand?"

"It has been sold to Stark Industries," Sunny confirmed. Like this might not have been the first time he'd changed hands. Like being sold was nothing to write home about.

"You cost a lot, but you're worth it," Tony said, a bitter taste in his mouth. "So you're going to cooperate, right? No assassinations or attacks unless I give you the order?" Which, of course, would be never, but he had to verify he wasn't about to set a murderbot loose on the world.

"Yes, sir, Director Stark."

Director Stark. He could at least get used to that part, he guessed.


	4. Risk Assessment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Pepper talk Sunny. Fury and Pierce talk Natasha and the Winter Soldier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am really so very sorry for the delay in posting. I gave a terrible job my two weeks notice and as I thought would happen they bumped my workload from ~60 hour weeks to ~72 hour weeks... So I have been too exhausted to write much(and I maaay have spent a lot of my free time recently playing Pokemon Go...!) But now I have a month's worth of free time and I hope to do some catching up!! :))

"We can't go public with Sunny."

Pepper didn't even look up from the screen in front of her. As Tony stepped further into the room, he could see the monitor displayed flight details for the race in Monaco. She was probably charting the pace at which the plane's fuel tank would drain during the trip and syncing that information to time the in-flight meal. "Who is Sunny?"

"Sunny Delight. The guy from the box."

She finally looked at him and her expression was one of either ridicule or pity. Maybe a bit of both. "He's named after an orange drink?"

Tony sighed because he thought the joke might go over people's heads if they hadn't personally interacted with the killbot. But _he_ knew it was funny so that's what mattered. "No, _I_ named him after something cheery because he's not cheery at all and that's how jokes _work._ The only thing approaching a name that he gave was 'the Winter Soldier'. Or 'it'. Because he calls himself 'it' and hasn't used the word 'I" since he woke up."

A more pure kind of confusion creased Pepper's brow and she pushed away from her desk to get a better look at Tony around the monitor. "What are you talking about?"

Tony gave his best summary of an unsummarizable situation and since Pepper was Pepper, she followed it perfectly. She was going to do things with this company Tony couldn't even dream up because his brain was about as sharp as a cotton ball compared to hers. When it came to certain things, at least. "So we have a man who won't even acknowledge he's a person, claims to be an assassin for World War II era combatants, has been sold to you along with other weapons by a rival arms' manufacturer, and you _don't_ want to tell the government about it?"

Tony rolled up onto his toes briefly and nodded. Then he snapped his fingers because he'd just remembered, "He also thinks I'm the supreme leader of everything."

"You think everyone thinks that," Pepper muttered, glancing back at the computer.

Tony frowned. "He calls me Director Stark. And I like it, by the way. Sounds important. Might need you to create a position in the company that comes with the title but no additional responsibilities."

She briefly pressed a hand to her forehead before pulling it away to wave it towards him. "Aren't you the least bit concerned by a man claiming to be an assassin sharing a roof with you and numerous employees?"

He shrugged. "Not when I'm the one with the finger on the trigger." She gave him a severe look and he said, "Obviously I'm not going to squeeze it, Pep! But if he thinks I'm in charge, it's not the worst position to be in when it comes to cyborg super-soldiers. Besides, I'm not exactly giving him freedom to roam right now." The soldier was currently waiting placidly in one of the rooms Tony used for testing repulsors. None were in the room now, just unfinished pieces of equipment. Which, admittedly, could be used for bludgeoning in even the most untrained of hands, but the point was that the guy wasn't going to tear his way out of there, metal arm or not. The walls were prototypes he'd made when a one General Ross came to him trying to draft a contract for a cell which could contain that rampaging green menace that'd been all over the news a couple years ago. The contract ended up falling through but he kept working at the project, figuring it could be a useful enough thing to have in a world that was getting more bizarre and hostile every day. Nothing he'd done with his various suits and laser had ever damaged them, so he figured that was a safe place for Sunny to be. Plus Jarvis was playing nanny and he was really good at it.

"This is only going to make you look like you were trying to hide things..."

"Well I am."

"Tony-"

"Look, they're already starting to come for the suits. You know why we can't let that happen. If they aren't mine, then they end up everyone else's, and where would we be? If everyone has an Iron Man suit, no one does, and we're back to where we were before but with more efficient means of destruction."

"So you don't want to give up-" She waved her hand back towards the lab floors, clearly searching for something to call the killbot.

"Sunny," he reminded her.

" _Sunny_ ," she acquiesced, tone making it clear how ridiculous she found the name. Tony really thought it wasn't so bad a thing to call a person, but he was apparently at a one hundred percent failure rate right now. "Because you don't trust the government to...?"

"To actually rehabilitate him. Or keep him locked up, whichever they do to guys like this. One of the doctors specifically used the word 'conditioning'. Do you know what that's a synonym for in a case like this?" He let the tablet in his hands hit the desk for added effect. A conversation like this could use a little drama. "Brainwashing. Somebody turned this guy into a lap dog, and why? To kill people, so they didn't have to get their hands dirty. I don't know if it was something the guy submitted to voluntarily or not, but let's look at the evidence. If someone was devoted enough to an organization to have a surgery as painful and extensive as he's had, why would the quote unquote conditioning be necessary? If he was so loyal to HYDRA or whoever, why would they need to dehumanize him so thoroughly as to deny him a sense of self? Do these things strike you as something that's done to a volunteer?"

Pepper's brows tilted upward and it was the sort of look she got when watching videos of puppies with casts on their little tiny paws. "You're saying someone forced him to be this way? Is that possible?"

"Oh it's possible. And obviously I can't know for sure without more information, but information isn't a thing it seems Sunny was really allowed to _have._ What I _do_ know for sure is that giving him up to the government is like putting a big fat chicken in the fox's den. You think the people who want my suits are just going to play nice when they get the programmable super soldier instead? Beyond that, there's the HYDRA element. If that part's true, no one seems to know about it." Tony had taken a minute to investigate that himself. He wanted to believe it was some weird outlying thing Sunny was mentioning but come on. What were the chances of that? Maybe whoever put Sunny together-or, more accurately, ripped him apart-was a history buff and just got some kind of weird kick out of having their robot man pledge loyalty to HYDRA. Neo-Nazis were, unfortunately, a thing, so maybe Neo-HYDRA was too. Tony's searches only returned results about the history of the organization, nothing at all current. So were they real and laying very, very low, hiding from the entire world for decades? Or was it just some weird in-joke?

"Maybe he made it up," Pepper offered, trying to find a best case scenario.

"That's not the sort of thing I want to just hope for the best on. If they aren't around, fine, but someone did this to this guy and they're probably not going to just sit by while someone else tries to undo it all. And if HYDRA _is_ still around, somehow, then I'm not okay with just ignoring that. Because guess what the killbot said when he heard my name?"

"Nothing good, I take it," Pepper said quietly.

"He said Starks are the enemy. Now I managed to convince him that wasn't the case anymore, but that was about as difficult as winning a little league tournament would be for Babe Ruth. Presuming they're still around somewhere, HYDRA's not going to be as impressionable and accepting as our little ray of sunshine. If we're the ones who turn their murder machine over to the government, we're going to have a way bigger mess on our hands."

" _If_ they really still exist."

"I know it's a big if. But it's also a potentially deadly if and I try to keep my eye on those, when I can." They seemed to crop up at an exponential rate since he'd become Iron Man. The palladium poisoning had just been the lethal icing on the grossest cake.

Pepper was quiet as she considered things and he knew she probably didn't wake up today expecting to have this fall into her lap. But she was easily the most capable person Tony knew, so there was no one better to have at his side to figure this whole confusing, sometimes horrific puzzle out. "How sure are you that you convinced Sunny you aren't his enemy? That he wouldn't hurt you, or anyone else here?"

"Pretty sure. I told you, he thinks I'm his handler or director or whatever. That I'm in charge." Sunny hadn't shown any signs or even small attempts at violence. And if he'd wanted Tony dead, he easily could've done it. Yeah, Tony had his suit and he knew a thing or two about how to fight without it. But there was a world of difference between going toe to toe with the average human and a Captain America knock-off. Still, the thought crossed his mind that this was all some complicated way of Hammer getting inside the company and stealing a suit for the purposes of reverse-engineering it. Tony wasn't about to slip into complacency just because of this unusual situation, and Sunny wasn't going anywhere near any weapons or suits or tech that he could get anything useful out of.

"How'd you manage to convince him you're his boss if he thinks you're the bad guy?"

Tony went quiet which told Pepper everything she needed to know. She said his name the way a mother says her child's when he's put something in his mouth that he shouldn't. He shrugged and threw up his hands in surrender. "I _may_ have told him I made a deal with HYDRA. That I traded them some of my stuff for him."

"So you're reinforcing the idea that he's an object that gets bought and sold."

"For now, yes. We are entering weird, weird territory, Pepper, and it was all I could think of to ensure things didn't get violent."

"How can you _know_ you've ensured that, though? We know very little about all of this."

"How do you suppose we get answers? HYDRA's head office isn't in the YellowPages last time I checked." He cocked his head and crossed his arms as he sank down to sit on her desk. "I'm not going to deny that this isn't a risky move. But if this is all purely accidental, we've learned things someone doesn't want the world knowing. This guy came from somewhere, and that somewhere is nowhere good. If there's a threat building up out there, I need to know as much as I can to fight it, and right now, he's the only source of information I've got."

She sighed through her nose, obviously hitting the same wall he had in the maze they'd been thrust into by the accidental purchase of a killing machine. Getting rid of him meant condemning the guy to either being used like a tool again or being stuck in a box for the rest of his miserable life. To keep him meant attracting the attentions of whoever made him for nefarious purposes. Tony knew that was dangerous. But it also might've been the only way to draw out a potential threat that had gone unnoticed until now. He'd taken it upon himself to help protect people, so he didn't have it in him to chicken out now just because things had gotten really, really weird.

"We need to talk to Hammer," Pepper said, completely surprising him. Tony expected more resistance, more arguing. Less clothes. But he was always expecting that last one and walking away disappointed. "That's the only lead we have for now, so we investigate it. Sunny doesn't sound like an entirely reliable source of information. So we ask Hammer about him."

"Okay. Get him a ticket."

Pepper shook her head. "Get who a ticket to where?"

"Sunny. To Monaco."

She stared. "You want to put a man-a _super soldier_ -who called you an enemy and who is an assassin, with a metal arm, in a small metal cylinder with us, for twelve hours. Have you gone insane." It wasn't even a question for her. He didn't let it get to him. Most geniuses were thought of as crazy in their lifetime, right? Their unfairly short, brief, poison-soaked lifetimes.

"Uh, no. You think I'm going to leave him here while I'm out? Who knows what kind of mess he'll make and Jarvis is only so useful as a babysitter."

"Having no body makes it a somewhat difficult task, sir."

Tony pointed up at the ceiling, conceding the point to Jarvis. "Besides, Sunny needs to work out some custody issues with Hammer, and it'd probably be more effective in person."

Pepper gave him another look, one that said both 'that's the worst idea I've ever heard out of your mouth' and 'how did you get this way' with a dash of 'and why do I allow it'.

So he went on the defensive. "We've got what, two weeks? That gives us time to gauge the guy's behavior. If it seems too risky to take him, then we won't, big deal."

"And if he's a good enough actor to fool you for those two weeks so he can get you when you're most vulnerable and without a way to escape?"

"Okay, one? Talk with him for like five seconds and you'd be the delusional one if you thought he was capable of acting. I don't think he even knows what lies _are_ , Pep. Two? I am _never_ vulnerable. Never."

"Then it's kind of you to take the time to consider that the rest of us might be."

Tony sighed, a very dramatic, lengthy kind of thing and not at all exaggerated and childish. "Two weeks, Pepper, that's all. Give him that, and you'll see. He's not a double agent, he's an assassin. Those aren't usually hired for their acting skills."

"Aren't they sometimes one and the same, assassins and double agents?" She cocked an eyebrow as she said it and maybe she felt like it was a ridiculous conversation to be having. She'd be right, of course.

"Two weeks," Tony repeated, wiggling two fingers in the air.

She stared, beyond done with him. And he thought for a minute she really was going to put her foot down here. He could see why. He couldn't give suits to everybody on the plane if Sunny suddenly went off the rails and felt like killing all of them. But he knew if he just had the time to observe the guy further, Tony would be able to get a sense for how at-risk they really were. Beyond that, the nagging thought wouldn't stop when he'd considered that whoever might want Sunny back would see the trip as the perfect opportunity to snatch him up. If Iron Man wasn't here but Sunny was, no one was left to stop someone from taking him back. Leaving Sunny behind just wasn't an option now. "I can't believe I'm saying this," Pepper muttered. "But fine. Have it your way. Prove he isn't a threat, and he can go."

Tony nodded. "Done." Did he know how he'd accomplish that, exactly? Well, no. But he usually had a way of figuring things out, one way or another. 

* * *

It'd been a few hours since her last contact with Fury when she got the message. It would look like an innocuous code to anyone snooping on her, but it was an order to get away from curious eyes and ears. Like Jarvis. So she did just that. From her surely overpriced hotel room four blocks away from Stark Tower, she sat on her unreasonably comfortable bed and texted back the coded response to indicate she was ready to talk.

The screen on the laptop lit up with the notification of an incoming call. She double-checked the security of the connection one last time before answering it. She accepted both the calls, screen split between Nick in D.C. and Pierce in Chicago. That was her first indication that she was not going to be allowed to stay on this assignment without a fight. Nick spoke first. "You alone?"

"Yes."

"Agent Romanoff," Pierce said both in greeting and as a start to a conversation she didn't want to have. "I've spoken with Nick about your discovery. First, let me thank you for promptly reporting this instead of feeling obligated to continue your assignment without mentioning it. Your safety is much more important to us than following leads like this one."

"With all due respect, sir, I think all of SHIELD's agents understand the risks inherent in the job," she answered. Saying Pierce had a habit of being paternal was almost an understatement. She didn't take it personally. He was like that with just about everyone. Clint called him _Pops,_ for God's sake, and it made the guy laugh. Pierce was easily likable and wasn't one for touting his position as if it made him untouchable. But she kind of wished right now he'd go the more traditional route of cold, professional detachment and leaver her to the job.

"There are risks, Natasha, and then there are _risks,_ " Nick said. "And this one's the latter, in all-caps."

"I can do this. I'm good at going unseen," she insisted.

"The soldier nearly killed you once-" Nick started.

She knew it was a little forward for her to interrupt a superior. With said superior's superior on the line to witness it, no less. But maybe it'd show them just how much she wanted to stay on this assignment. If she lost track of the soldier, she lost her opportunity to give back. To help undo some of what she'd done with her life. He'd taught her how to kill. So she could take the chance and teach him how to live. "Nearly. If he'd wanted me dead he would've finished the job when I was already wounded." Yes, he still terrified her. But he'd left her alive. Could be that it didn't mean anything more than he couldn't be bothered with her. Or it could mean he had something approaching a conscience. Stronger than the fear was the curiosity. The need to find out if she was right about him.

Pierce shook his head slowly, concern for her plain on his face. "We can't run with that assumption. It's outright irresponsible of us to let your life depend on a _maybe._ "

"Furthermore," Nick added, "all it's gonna take is one good look at you for him to know who you are. Then he blows your cover to Stark."

"We don't know he's cooperating with Stark," she said. "Maybe he wouldn't tell him anything." He seemed like the quiet type, after all. 

"Again, Agent Romanoff, too many maybes." Pierce sighed a little and glanced around his own room before settling his eyes back on the camera. "We don't doubt your capability. You understand that, correct?"

"Yes, Secretary Pierce." She crossed her arms before continuing. Did she tell them why she wanted to do this? Did she explain her suspicions? Would they understand? "I'm just trying to do the job I was assigned to do." No. They probably wouldn't. If she made it plain that this had become a personal mission, it'd just give them further reason to pull her out. Because that's when people started making mistakes, when things got too personal.

"We get that, Natasha, we do," Nick said. "But this is way more than you bargained for. Watching Stark is a monumental task in and of itself. Adding something like this is just asking too much."

"I don't think that," she said.

Pierce laughed. "I admire your resolve. It's definitely something to aspire towards." But still, he shook his head. "I'm afraid I just can't in good conscience let you go back to this assignment. I'm sorry, Agent Romanoff, but that's my final word on the matter."

"And I agree," Nick added. "You did what you could. But this isn't worth your life."

She rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger and tried a different angle. "Stark's going to get suspicious. He's perceptive."

"You know we don't send you in without good excuses when we pull you out," Nick said. "Your grandma just came down with pneumonia and it's looking serious. You're headed to Florida immediately and you're sorry to have to split so suddenly, but you're sure there are plenty of great candidates in line to replace you. And there are. If Stark's really suspicious, the hospital has the records to back up your story. Your plane ticket has been paid for and he's welcome to track the flight himself."

She snorted. "So you'll risk someone else's life instead?"

Pierce shook his head. "The risk is significantly smaller for someone who lacks the...colorful history you share with the Winter Soldier."

"But still present," she said.

"He's a threat we need to keep eyes on," Nick said. " _Someone_ has to watch the guy, now that we know where he is. But that someone shouldn't be you, a master assassin's only loose end."

"It's all purely because of your past interactions," Pierce put in like he needed to remind her. Like she needed to be reassured that they didn't think of her as less than capable. She wasn't really after that, though.

But they weren't going to relent on this. She didn't need to be an expert at reading people to figure that one out. And good as she was at manipulating people, there just wasn't an available avenue for that now. Each one was a dead end of _the Soldier is simply too deadly._ Which is why it stood out to her even more than he'd left her alive. Nick said she was his loose end. But good assassins simply _didn't_ leave loose ends. Not without some reason for it. "Understood. I'll inform Stark of my resignation tomorrow." Defeat always tasted bitter, no matter what form it came in. Bullet wounds or kind words offer as platitudes, it was all the same to her.

That's why she never gave up very easily. With the video call over, she shut the laptop and unlocked her phone to send a text to Barton: _I'm going to need a favor._


	5. That's 25 Seconds Per Donut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony will do better next time, Pepper brings breakfast, Sunny analyzes Seinfeld, and Natalie quits.

So, maybe Tony was a little out of practice with that whole 'caring about another living being' thing. Sure, he had friends and associates that he obviously didn't want to come to harm and who he wished well. But that was a little different than actually looking out for every single one of their needs. And also obviously, most friends didn't need that to begin with because each of the involved parties was independent enough to decide what they wanted to eat for dinner, when they wanted to go to sleep, or even, God willing, able to decide to take a bathroom break on their own.

Sunny did not fall into any of these camps.

That's why Tony was greeted by Jarvis the next day with the warning, "Miss Potts is quite displeased that you neglected to feed your guest."

It hit him like he imagined Pepper would like to do on a regular basis-a firm slap in the face. He'd left Sunny in the indestructible, possibly Hulk-proof room and had kind of gotten tied up in other projects. Granted, they were very important projects. Like researching new and interesting ways to power the arc reactor in his chest, or figuring out how to not die. Now he knew that no liquid that was green could possibly taste good, no matter what he did. But if that was the price he had to pay to keep existing, he figured it was worth it. "Well, if it's any consolation, I forgot to eat last night, too." The leaf juice did not count as food. God help whoever thought it did.

"She is also upset that you left him alone for the rest of the day without addressing any of his potential needs."

He sighed. "I put Seinfeld on and told him to take a load off, what more does she want?"

"She asked if you realized that he may require access to a restroom at some point. Or food and water. Or a decent change of clothing. Or-"

"Okay, fine, I get it, I dropped the ball on knowing the ins and outs of brainless super-soldier care and feeding, so sue me." He threw up one hand and winced through another gulp of the plant cocktail. "I'll go talk to him now." Tony thought leaving the guy with some entertainment and a place to relax-if he knew _how_ to relax-would have been enough. But he forgot that the guy was only wearing an undershirt and sweatpants. And he forgot to leave him something to drink and food was a thing Tony forgot for himself plenty of times so it shouldn't have surprised anyone that he'd forgotten it for someone else. And maybe it hadn't crossed his mind to ask the guy at any point if he needed a bathroom. It wasn't like Tony was about to give the possible HYDRA assassin free roam of the building to go find one himself. So Tony was out of practice with this kind of thing. He'd never had a younger sibling to do stuff like that for. And he'd never really cared about pets growing up, much too absorbed in building robots which basically served the same function. And robots never needed to be taken for walks or given food and water. They just worked until you noticed they didn't and then you fixed them. He _supposed_ he understood this approach did not work with people. As he headed for the elevator, Tony asked Jarvis, "How is our icebox warrior doing, anyway?"

"Vitals have remained stable. I've observed nothing of note, save for the fact that he chose to maintain a standing position the entire night and he did not appear to sleep."

"Maybe he's part cow," Tony suggested, thinking of eighteen hours of standing because it hadn't crossed your mind there were other ways to pass your time. "Do you think I could tip a guy like him?"

"I can not in good conscience recommend that you try, sir, however entertaining the results may be."

"Good to know you have faith in me, Jarvis." He keyed in the access code to the room, but paused before entering. He had to be prepared for the worst here. "There's still a suit in the room ready for deployment, right?"

"Yes sir. Behind the center panel of the ceiling."

"Great." He took another swig of his drink and cringed. "Oh God this is the worst." He smacked his lips a few times but nothing really worked to wash away that taste. Instead he returned his focus to the room ahead. Square, with a bolted down work table. No tools were present. There was a bedroll and pillow laid out for Sunny-because Tony _did_ think about this stuff, a little, even if no one thought he did-and the screen on the opposite wall was still playing Seinfeld. Tony liked the show, but eighteen straight hours of it? Jesus. Sunny snapped to attention when Tony entered, just shy of throwing out whatever version of the Nazi salute HYDRA liked. Tony waved a hand as if to tell him to relax. "Well. How've you been?"

"It has been observing the Seinfeld surveillance tapes."

That was an interesting way of describing a television show so of course Tony had to ask, "What have you learned?"

"Primary target Jerry Seinfeld presents a minimal threat and can be eliminated with ease. The target's peripherals vary in threat level. George Costanza presents no threat and may be easily coerced into maintaining silence and possibly recruited with little intimidation, though it must advise that he appears to lack any relevant skills whatsoever. Elaine Benes presents a mild threat due to headstrong nature and tenacity. The individual known only as Kramer presents the largest threat. He is unpredictable, exhibits a vast array of knowledge on multiple subjects, and maintains a high number of connections in various fields and industries. It requires further observation in order to decide the best method with which to dispatch him." Tony stared because of all the ways he expected a living weapon to interpret a television show-Well, it probably should've been near the top, actually. Sunny cocked his head slightly, apparently having a little more to say. "It has also learned that it is socially unacceptable to drape oneself in velvet, and that soup is a privilege, not a right."

Tony snorted. "Well, I mean, you learned this from a man called the Soup _Nazi._ So he's not exactly the best example to-" Was he seriously discussing the life lessons to be garnered from a sitcom with a guy who didn't even understand what a sitcom was? He waved his hands like he could erase that track of the conversation. "Never mind. Just, look." He pointed at the TV. Sunny's eyes went there right away. "This wasn't information for any assignment. It's just television. Entertainment. It's not even real."

Sunny blinked, eyes shifting from the screen to Tony. "It requires clarification."

"Just-I mean, you _know_ what entertainment is, don't you?"

"No sir."

Tony sighed and drew a hand over his face. This was ridiculous. Where did you even _start_ with something like this? "Okay. Well, here's a lesson. Entertainment is a thing you enjoy. It can be frivolous and stupid, or complicated and important. If it keeps you busy, and you enjoy it, it's entertainment."

Sunny's eyes shifted, like he could find the additional information he needed somewhere in the room. For all his other nigh-robotic behavior, his face was remarkably expressive, so it was pretty easy to pick up on the fact that he was confused about the subject given his furrowed brow and searching eyes. "It is not permitted to enjoy things. Pleasure is a personal sensation and self-interest is the root of all evil."

HYDRA or not, whoever had made Sunny the way he was seemed like a total drag to be around. "I'm your new director, right?"

"Affirmative."

"So a new director means new rules, yes?"

"There are often minor differences in protocol."

Tony wagged a finger. "Well, I'm kind of a unique guy. And I have some _major_ differences in protocol for you. Here's one: pleasure is not a bad thing. In fact, it's pretty great. That's why it's called pleasure. As long as you aren't taking pleasure at someone else's expense-you know, like, hurting people-then you're good." He watched as Sunny digested this new rule. And, well, the guy didn't seem like he was buying it, really. "You get me?"

"It is not permitted to enjoy things," Sunny said again. Tony couldn't decide if it was because the change was just too big for him to handle or if he just had trouble understanding what Tony was trying to say. Conditioning wasn't the kind of thing that just got brushed away with one sentence, and Tony wasn't exactly well-versed enough in any kind of psychology to attempt to unravel it himself.

Which reminded him. "Jarvis, where are we at with that list of psychiatrists. Or -ologists, whichever. Probably both."

"The list is compiled and prepared for viewing, sir."

Transparent blue infocards with bullet points and photos popped up between Tony and Sunny. Tony let his eyes wander over everything, but he really wasn't all that sure what kind of doctor would be best for dealing with brainwashing. It wasn't exactly a common enough thing for many specialists to be dedicated to it, but he trusted Jarvis well enough to pick the best contenders. He glanced at Sunny, who was seeing everything in reverse from where he stood. "How about it, Sunny? See any you like?" It was a rhetorical question, given Sunny's apparent inability to _like_ things.

So it was to Tony's great surprise that Sunny slowly reached out for one of the cards with his right hand. He touched one of the images, noticed that it moved, and spun it to face him. So he was adaptable enough. That had to be good, right? Sunny studied the card some more before spinning it back to face Tony but ultimately said nothing.

Tony looked over the card himself, the list of areas of focus Jarvis had compiled reminding Tony of his own brief search for help. He'd abandoned that pretty fast and decided to bury himself in a million other projects instead. And he figured now his mental state didn't exactly matter that much, seeing as how he'd be dead soon anyway. With a huff at the decidedly morbid turn of his thoughts, he returned his focus to the hovering, blue-tinged card. Jarvis had kindly included a photo of the shrink, revealing a guy in his early fifties. Dark blond hair with some grey mixed in, glasses, suit, tie all that standard professional jazz. He didn't exactly know what kinds of issues Sunny had, but some kind of behavioral therapy seemed like a good place to start for undoing extreme conditioning. He held the card and wiped away the others with a gesture. "Jarvis, start with this guy. Dig up whatever you can on him. We'll see if he's capable and trustworthy, and go from there."

"Of course, sir."

He glanced at Sunny. And it struck him how little he knew about the person in front of him. He'd been placid enough so far, and that was good. But Tony was going to need a way to figure out if he'd stay that way. There was no sense in dragging doctor after doctor here just to have to drag them back out of harm's way if Sunny went off the deep end. So where did he start? Foundations always seemed like a pretty good place to build from, so he said, "Let's also get a facial recognition search running. Pay particular attention to missing persons reports. Especially missing kids. Do age projections where it's necessary." Tony reasoned that conditioning this severe probably took a lot of time. And, unfortunately, kids had the most malleable brains. If someone was sick enough, they'd want to start with dough that hadn't been through the kiln yet. Inject all the crazy when the individual was young and most impressionable.

"This process may take quite some time," Jarvis informed him.

And yeah, he kind of figured that much. There were tons of missing people all over the world. And that was just a fraction of their potential search pool. Maybe Sunny had never had any family to report him as missing. Maybe his birth had never even been registered. The possibilities were pretty mind boggling, really. It suddenly seemed way too easy for someone to swipe a kid from an orphanage or a hospital or even their own home. "That's fine. Take it one decade at a time. Go ahead and go back as far as..." He considered it further. Where should they stop? Yes Sunny didn't look like he'd quite hit thirty yet. But with the cryogenics, it made his age pretty difficult to guess. The super soldier serum wouldn't help matters-it'd been posited that Captain America might've lived up to four times the normal lifespan of a human if he hadn't died in that wreck. Some more radical papers suggested that he might not ever die of natural causes as his body would've constantly repaired any damage caused by aging or disease. So was this guy the same way? "Well, just keep going until you've exhausted every avenue, I guess." Hopefully Jarvis would find something before having to dig too far into the past. Granted, images would only become more sparse the farther back they went, but it'd take a damn long time to just get through the last ten years alone.

"If sir could have his guest please step back and gather his hair from his face," Jarvis requested. Tony gave a nod to Sunny, and he complied without hesitation standing perfectly still while a thin line of light swept over his face. Tony would be lying if he said it wasn't _slightly_ amusing to see the guy holding his hair back like he was ready to tie it up for a day at the beach or something. He also thought maybe he saw something a little familiar there. But of course it was one of those fleeting kinds of familiarity. The kind that seemed to only get further away the more you chased it. He let it go. If he was someone really that familiar, Jarvis would find him soon enough. "Scan successful. I'll begin aggregating the requested information immediately."

"Thanks, J. Now, back to you-" Tony stilled his pointing after someone knocked at the door to the secure room. _Knocked._ Who knocked on doors here? "Jarvis, who is it?"

"Miss Potts. She requested I not inform you of her impending arrival as she wished to ensure you didn't have adequate time to find excuses for your lack of hospitality and to be certain you would be unable to avoid her."

Tony took in a breath and really, he'd already been anticipating a verbal beatdown after his earlier exchange with Jarvis regarding Pepper's thoughts of Tony's treatment of Sunny so far. He just hadn't expected it to come quite so soon, and apparently she knew that. Tony glanced from the door to Sunny, who seemed utterly disinterested with Jarvis' announcement. This was not exactly the way Tony wanted to test out how prepared he was to deal with potential violence from the cyborg snowman. Was there any reason to suspect he'd attack a newcomer? Probably not, given the lack of incidents so far, but Tony simply couldn't ignore the giant variable that was his complete lack of knowledge regarding the alleged HYDRA assassin standing before him. He tried to remember there was a suit in the room, ready to be deployed with the kind of reaction time only a computer could have. Surely his suits could hold up against super-soldiers, but he hoped he wouldn't have to find out. "Okay, let her in," he said, eyes on Sunny.

And he hardly seemed to notice another person had entered the room. He just kept waiting there, maybe expecting someone to give him something to do. Tony decided it was a good sign. Pepper and Sunny hadn't officially met, unless the brief glimpse she'd gotten of him in the freezer counted. So, how did he introduce Pepper? Where did she fit into the grand scheme here? He let himself be the director, but Pepper was now technically his boss. So what was higher than a director? He looked at her to get a bead on how annoyed she was with him but that train of thought didn't get very far from the station because her hands were full with a box of donuts, a bag of bagels, some plastic cups, and a carton of orange juice. So instead of mentioning anything very important, Tony muttered in a way that totally wasn't even _tinged_ with jealousy, "You never brought me donuts."

"You've never been frozen alive," she answered back pleasantly, setting the spread on the work bench. It looked like there was going to be a meeting in here any minute, a meeting that was really just an excuse for the food.

"No, _I_ was just tortured in a cave in the Middle East."

"And you got your burger, didn't you?" Before he could answer her, she turned one of her bright, professional smiles to Sunny and said, "Hi, I'm Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries." She held out a hand and he glanced at it before returning his eyes to her face. Tony snorted, kind of expecting that much, but of course, so was Pepper. She withdrew the offered hand without missing a beat, maybe the only time in all of history that scenario didn't linger awkwardly over everyone in the room. She gestured back at the donuts and bagels. "I've brought a little breakfast here, since certain associates of ours forget that people have needs like food, or drink. There are donuts in this box, bagels are in that bag there, and orange juice here. If you'd like something different, feel free to let Jarvis know and we can arrange something to be brought up to you."

Sunny looked at each item as Pepper indicated it, and it was almost like he expected them to start moving on their own. Ultimately he just stood there and let his eyes wander back to Tony.

"Have at it, champ. Once that smell works its way through the vents, they'll be gone before you know it. Metal-armed assassin in the room or not," Tony said, popping open the box of donuts himself. Then he groaned quietly, thinking of his impending death, his health, all of that boring but necessary stuff. He sighed and opened the bag of bagels instead. Sure. Sesame and onion. Definitely as good as chocolate glazed with chocolate icing and chocolate sprinkles.

"Are you hungry?" Pepper asked Sunny.

He looked at her, then looked at Tony like he was waiting for something. Tony shrugged, trading his bagel out for another with cream cheese already spread on it because hell if this was going to be perfectly healthy for him. Pepper thought far ahead enough to bring the guy all this food but to simultaneously not be cavalier about bringing utensils that could easily be turned into deadly weapons into the room with her. How had the one perfect person on this Earth ended up here? Tony stopped himself from getting too involved in daydreams by glancing back at Sunny when he realized the guy still hadn't answered the question. "What're you looking at me for? She asked you."

Pepper closed her eyes and sighed as Sunny informed them that he did require food like a mechanic might remind you to get your oil changed on a regular basis. She looked at Tony and said quietly, "Maybe he's waiting for _your_ permission, _director._ "

Tony mulled that over as he chewed. How'd she figure that? Yes, Tony was good enough at reading people. You simply didn't make it far in business if that wasn't a skill you had. But maybe this wasn't the sort of thing he was used to looking out for. And who was, really? "Is that it?" he asked Sunny. "You think you need my permission to decide if you want to eat?"

"Best practices in handling the Winter Soldier state that it must always defer to the highest authority in the room on all matters. If none are present, it may then make decisions to the best of its ability to approximate those which said authority would make."

Tony nodded at Pepper, who maintained an impressively passive and professional exterior in spite of the weirdness in front of her. "She's actually, technically, my boss."

"That's hardly what matters right now," Pepper said, getting herself a small plastic cup to fill with orange juice. "Because it seems to me that you should be able to decide for yourself what you want to eat. It's not even really up to any of us to decide if you're hungry, given that hunger just, um, happens. Because that's how we work, as human beings. We need food."

Sunny glanced around the room in that way he did, like he was looking for someone who wasn't present. "Food is often withheld as a corrective measure." He said it almost like he wanted to make sure she knew, just in case she needed to use that in the future.  _Baking soda works great on set-in stains. Using aluminum foil on your cookie sheets makes clean up a cinch. Punish your slaves the HYDRA way by starving them when they tell you they're hungry._

Pepper didn't treat it like the horrific statement it was, instead keeping up that warm and friendly vibe like she was speaking to a potential client and not a broken toy of a human being. "Well, I don't think you'll really have to worry about that during your time at Stark Industries. As I said before, if at any time you feel hungry, you just let Jarvis know and we'll make what accommodations we can available to you as per your request. We're really aiming to make your stay with us as comfortable as possible, okay?"

Sunny's face made it very plain that no, this was not okay because it was terribly unfamiliar. But still, in an effort to remain compliant, he said, "Understood."

She smiled, and held up her juice in a mock toast. "Tony, if we could speak outside, please?"

"Right," he said, even if it was kind of one of the last things he wanted to do since he was pretty sure what the discussion was going to be about. He set his bagel with its two missing bites back down on a napkin on the table, held a finger up to Sunny in a gesture of pause before realizing he might take that to mean _not_ to eat anything. "I'll be a minute. Eat and drink and do whatever." He waved a hand at the table as Pepper practically dragged him out by the other.

The door was closed, hallways checked for any listening ears, and Pepper whirled around to face Tony, all the friendliness and warmth gone from her face. "What on _Earth_ was that?" she demanded in a tone that told him just how much she'd been holding back in there.

"A cyborg super-soldier," he answered.

"Food is often withheld as a _corrective measure?_ " she quoted, eyes narrowing in disgust. "Who _does_ that to a human being? I just-Tony, this needs more attention than you or I are capable of giving."

"Remember, if we aren't the ones giving it, he might end up back with whoever set that rule," Tony said. He figured she'd be pretty upset with all this. But he really wanted to believe that Pepper would stay true to her earlier agreement to give Tony a chance to prove Sunny wasn't dangerous.

She inhaled deeply, eyes closing and her fingers came to pinch the bridge of her nose. "I know what you're trying to say, but I was unprepared. I was very, very unprepared."

He laughed in disbelief and she stared at him. "Pepper, I don't know if I'd _ever_ call you unprepared. The fact that you managed to talk to him like a member of the board was just icing on the cake to me, really. Look." He rolled his shoulders in their sockets a few times and some idle part of his brain wondered what it was like for Sunny to do something like that with his mechanical arm. "He's screwed up, that's obvious. And we might not be the right people to undo that, but we definitely have the resources to seek out those who can."

"I really hope you're serious about this," she said, pointing a finger at him. "It's easy to talk about, a lot harder to do. You left him in that room all night with nothing-"

"I know, I know, and that's on me. That's my screw up, I wasn't thinking," he said, hands up in a conciliatory gesture. "But it's a process, right? Learning all kinds of things here. Hey, Jarvis and I are already working on figuring out who he might be."

She studied him for a moment with that face that said _I am not impressed._ Then she glanced back at the door and sighed. "You'll let me know if you find anything?"

"Of course."

"Okay. _Try_ to pay more attention to the basic needs going forward? Bathroom breaks, food and water, that kind of thing? I'm not saying for you to be there in person every second with him. But some kind of check-in at regular intervals might be nice."

"Yeah, I got it." 

"Fine," she said, glancing down at her cup of orange juice. "I'm going back to my actual job now. The one where I run the company, not the one where I babysit grown men."

"Ouch," Tony mumbled, holding a hand to his chest as Pepper disappeared back down the hall. He didn't think he'd ever get used to feeling hard metal there. Tony stepped back into the room before he could dwell too much on the fact that he might not live long enough to warm up to the reactor embedded in him. He stopped in his tracks when his eyes landed on the table. All twelve donuts were gone. None of the bagels had been touched. "Jarvis, I thought you were watching your figure."

"I take up ninety-seven million more square feet than the average person, by design, sir."

"Sunny, did you eat all of those?"

"Affirmative."

Tony stared. It wasn't like there was chocolate on the guy's face or fingers or clothes or anything to indicate the donuts had ever even existed but the empty box. How long had he been speaking with Pepper in the hall? It couldn't have been more than five minutes. He couldn't bring himself to ask Jarvis how many calories a dozen donuts had but felt nauseous even without the answer. "Are you, um, okay, in this area?" Tony asked, waving a hand around his own stomach.

Sunny looked down at himself as if to be very sure. Then he looked back up at Tony. "It is functioning at one-hundred percent capacity."

Tony blew out a breath, once again grappling with the idea of eating a dozen donuts in on sitting. "Here's hoping it stays that way for the sake of the janitorial crew."

* * *

She reread the conversation one last time before slipping the phone back into her pocket. It never hurt to be certain about things. Clint first tried to turn her off the idea of attempting to make contact with, in his words, "not just a master assassin who tried to kill you, but _the_ master assassin who tried to kill you." It took some cajoling. She had to remind Clint of what he'd done for her. The risk it'd involved for him to reach out to her. How far they'd come from nearly killing each other to being best friends.

And in true Clint fashion, he first responded with "lol, lame."

But at least he was listening to her. He agreed to pick up what information he could by getting cozy with Natasha's replacement. She would've done it directly, but couldn't risk Fury or Pierce taking notice. And they would accurately read her intentions without a lot of difficulty. She wasn't sure yet what that would earn her. Maybe some kind of suspension but then that'd just leave her with all the free time she wanted to further pursue the Soldier. Neither Pierce nor Fury got to the positions they had by being so oblivious about cause and effect, so they'd probably put her on some assignment halfway across the world until the Soldier was apprehended.

Maybe that would've been for the best. Who was she kidding? She'd been the Soldier's trainee, not his handler. Why did she think he'd listen to anything she had to say?  
  
She squared her shoulders and shifted the documents to rest against her hip. It was pure cowardice to give up now. And maybe part of her hesitation went back to her shared roots with the Soldier. It was against protocol to speak with him. To treat him like anything but a teacher. You certainly didn't try to make a friend of him. So in pursuing this, she wasn't just defying her current employers, but her previous ones, too. Funny how a pair of such different organizations could end up having similar policies on so specific a subject. But then again, was there anyone who would've been encouraging her to do this?  
  
It didn't matter. She didn't require authorization to satisfy personal interests. That wasn't who she was anymore. She'd withdraw officially, as was requested, and use what contacts she could to keep a distant eye on the Soldier. When the time was right, when she knew it was safe to approach-as safe as it could be, anyway-she would. The elevator doors opened and she stepped out to sever ties with Stark. 

Jarvis must've informed him of her impending arrival. Before she could say a word, Stark asked, without looking up from whatever he was working on, "Natalie, if you were suddenly thrust into a situation where you found yourself responsible for a guy who'd been brainwashed into thinking his only purpose in life is to kill things and you wanted him to not think that way anymore, what would you do?"

He certainly had a way with words. Meaning, he was entirely too full of them. She tilted her head, a little amused because he'd essentially decided to do the same thing she wanted. Was he prepared for it? Probably not. She'd been through all manner of SHIELD-ordered counseling and therapy sessions, and she still wasn't exactly the most trusting or open individual. She still fought sometimes with the idea that she was more than just a tool being used for some end not entirely conceived of on her own. Stark may have been a genius in multiple areas. But based on what she knew of him so far, he didn't exactly strike her as the sort of compassionate, selfless individual needed to undo the kind of thing that may have been done to the Soldier. Still, because she'd been asked, she answered, "I'd find him someone he can trust. Of his own volition. Not because he's been ordered to."

Stark tapped his lips with two fingers, the rest tucked under his chin. "Mm. Any suggestions, since you sound like such an expert on all of this?"

She gave nothing away of course. No visible response to his insinuation that she was not, in fact, who she said she was. Maybe he wasn't the best with handling people's emotions and well-being. But Stark was frighteningly perceptive about others' intentions, which spoke to maybe a higher level of empathy than she'd initially given him credit for. "On who he can trust? No. He has to decide that on his own. Like the rest of us."

"Sure." Stark shrugged before glancing at the small file she held. "You've brought me paper."  
  
She set them on the desk in an effort to comply with his alleged distaste for being handed things. "Your itinerary for the week. And my letter of resignation along with information on my replacement." The latter was in a sealed envelope given to her by SHIELD. She wasn't supposed to look at it, so she didn't. Clint would be feeding her the info she needed so she had no interest in breaking the seal and reading it herself.   
  
"Wow. Am I that impossible to work with?" he asked, spinning the files to face him. He hummed as he pushed the itinerary away, completely uninterested.   
  
"I'm hardly that easy to get rid of, Mr. Stark," she responded dryly. She nodded towards the papers. "A family emergency requires my attention. I'm not sure when I'll be available again."  
  
"Yeah, I see that," he said, skimming the letter, undoubtedly picking out all the pertinent facts. "Really interesting timing."  
  
She knew he wasn't that stupid. Twenty-four hours after thawing the Winter Soldier and his mysteriously competent new-hire from nowhere suddenly needs to disappear. Fury and Pierce could've sent her in here wearing a SHIELD uniform and it would've been more subtle. "Yes, I'm sure my grandmother plans her potentially fatal illnesses to coincide with your personal schedule," she answered instead, taking a jab at his narcissism. Something he was, in fact, a little defensive about.   
  
He snorted in response. Whether the blow worked or not at muffling his suspicion was still up in the air. He extended a hand and she took it, in the interest of professionalism. "Well, it's been a lovely week. Sorry you had to leave so soon. Hope your aunt gets better."

"Grandmother," she corrected casually. So he wasn't giving up that easily. He thought he was good. And maybe he was, but she was certainly better. Really, _any_ SHIELD agent assigned to a task like this wouldn't be falling for a feint like that.

"Right. Grandma Rushman. She the one who taught you Latin?"

Maybe it didn't matter that he wasn't going to believe her. She was leaving, so there'd be nothing else for him to pursue. The fallout would be left to her replacement instead. Anyone they sent here would have to be sharp, so they were undoubtedly preparing themselves as she left them with this impossible workload. "She's not that old, Mr. Stark." She backed away towards the door, and gave one last parting shot, "Good luck with all your future projects." He was going to need it, that much she knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, feel free to yell at or with me on [tumblr](http://tchakaflocka.tumblr.com) :)))


	6. That's All They Really Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brief conversation between Clint and Natasha, and Pepper attempts to explain choice, personal freedom, and fashion to Sunny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm only posting this because cerseifer asked. :)))

"I don't mean to be insensitive," Clint said from his place on the counter top, "but do you have a death wish?"

"Do you?" she asked, not looking up from what he'd brought her. "You're rubbing your ass on my cutting board like a dog with worms."

He snorted because they both knew he wasn't quite doing that, but he slid off all the same. "I'm half-serious here, you know. I mean Fury pulled you out. _Nick_ Fury. A last name like that implies a complete and utter disregard for the safety of himself and everyone around him."

She rolled her eyes but didn't spare him a glance as she read over the information. It was a summary of the details prepared for Stark and his peripherals who'd be going with him to the race in Monaco. Only it'd been updated to include another slot for security personnel beside Happy Hogan. One of Stark's famous quirks, even before the 'Iron Man' nonsense, was his apparent lack of concern for his own safety. It was almost impossible for her to tell if he was seriously considering _using_ the Winter Soldier as a line of defense against any potential hostiles. Most of her wanted to say no, of course he wasn't. This was just a way to make the extra body on the plane look official to customs, border agents, and any press that took notice. But then again, it was a ridiculous, absolutely reckless thing to do, and that sort of impulsiveness was right up Stark's alley. Between that and her replacement's almost transparent approach with Stark, she was at a loss. "The only thing I'm having problems with is the agent's awful technique," she said, ignoring Clint's earlier statement about Fury. She turned to him and he was checking his teeth with the reflection of a spoon. She held back a comment about how she'd sprung for the bathroom that included a mirror, unwilling to let the conversation veer off track. "Does she really think it's the best tactic to repeatedly advise Stark to surrender the Soldier to the 'proper authorities' when there isn't a single authority the man trusts to begin with? Who trained her?"

Clint shrugged. "Maybe it's the whole 'river carving the Grand Canyon' approach. Wear him down until he submits."

"I don't think Stark knows how to submit _."_

Clint focused on picking at some green thing that was wedged between two teeth. "To be fair to her, it's out of your hands now. You aren't supposed to even know any of this, let alone know enough to critique her super spy style. Besides-" He nodded to the papers on the table in front of her. "-it's not like you can follow them to Monaco anyway. Why worry about it?"

"Because a rich guy playing vigilante who never considers consequences until they're about to be inflicted on him and the people around him is bringing a killing machine to a highly publicized and crowded event? Because I have a sinking feeling the whole thing is going to end in gunfire and dismemberment?" _Because I could prevent it if someone, anyone, would listen to me and let me just_ try _to reach someone the way others reached me,_ she thought, unable to vocalize it even to someone she trusted as highly as Clint. It wasn't about confirming for him that this was a personal interest of hers. Part of her feared he'd laugh, call her ridiculous. Why did she think this was her responsibility? Why did she think the Soldier was like her at all? Why did she want to help him when he'd never done anything significant to help her? And what the hell was she going to do with him if she did get to him? Failing didn't concern her so much as the prospect that, in getting to him, she'd discover there simply was no undoing what'd been done. That there was no going back once you'd spent so long shedding so much blood. That autonomy was a delusion when all you'd ever known was control.

"I'm sure that won't happen. Like, seventy-five percent," Clint responded, resorting to running his tongue over his teeth. "I mean, reports so far seem to indicate compliance on the Soldier's part. No word on him injuring anybody, intentionally or otherwise. And I mean, come on, if the guy's supposed to be the best assassin ever or whatever, why would he just lose it and start massacring people? That's not how assassin's work, and you know that."

"I think calling him an assassin is misleading."

"So what would you call him?"

She frowned. It was a thoughtful one. She wouldn't tell Clint that she was recalling precisely what she and the other Widows had collectively come to calling the Soldier-Mishka. Because none of them had ever seen something so powerful and so helpless all at once. Something strong made small. Someone, she never knew who, came to the conclusion that he was like a bear in a circus. Outside of the ringmaster's tent, he would've been something to be treated with caution, fear, perhaps even respect. But inside, he was put on a chain and robbed of the knowledge that there was any other choice but submission. So even though they'd been told to always call him Soldier, his other name stuck when they whispered about him to each other in secret. To this day she couldn't look at a stuffed bear without thinking of him, wondering what'd happened to him. And now here he was. "By his name," she said flatly.

"Very clever," Clint muttered, returning the spoon back to the drawer. In a few steps, she was there to fish it out and drop it noisily in the sink, maintaining eye contact with Clint the whole time. He kept a straight face at first, but was stifling laughter before she'd even made it back to the table to scoop up the papers. No, she couldn't follow Stark to Monaco. So what could she do but wait anxiously for them to come back, if at all?

* * *

"I think the wayfarers. Mm." Pepper paused to tilt her head and tried to mentally compare it to the pair of aviators. He was completely still while she thought it over, like he was undergoing some kind of examination and the slightest twitch would throw off the results. She'd be lying if she didn't say it was unsettling but tried to push past it. "Yeah, definitely. I think the blue frames look good on you, too. Cool colors, in general." She wasn't sure if it was because of his complexion or the silvery metal arm. It wasn't a factor she'd ever thought anyone would have to consider when building a wardrobe, but Stark Industries was always leading her to new and interesting experiences. Why shouldn't she be attempting to figure out how to dress a man with a bionic arm who professed to have no preferences whatsoever? It wasn't like she could leave an assistant to this. Natalie's abrupt departure had been a mixed bag for Pepper-on the one hand, they'd lost an obviously competent employee. On the other hand, Pepper had a little difficulty shaking the feeling that she couldn't be trusted completely. Her replacement was a little more personable, but just as level-headed, even in the face of Tony's unique approach to, well, just about everything.

While Sunny hadn't exhibited any violent tendencies in the days since he'd been here, Pepper wasn't willing to risk putting anyone at the company in danger. But she also couldn't take another week of the guy being left to wear the same few pairs of sweatpants and undershirt for the rest of his tenure, however long that ended up being. So she compromised, getting Sunny's measurements and having a variety of pieces sent to the tower in the hopes that he would wear them. New clothes that fit well made a lot of people feel better. Maybe the same would ring true for him too.

At the very least, it'd fill some of the emptiness in the small living space that was coming together. It wasn't up there with the other residential floors. Tony had mentioned something about an old project that kind of fell through kind of didn't, and this was supposed to reassure her that the walls were very durable. The rest was just the bare minimum-an actual bed to replace the bedroll. A plastic, transparent set of three drawers, which were pretty much empty except for the aforementioned sweatpants and shirts. Bathroom breaks were supposed to be routine, given that the room had no plumbing. It depressed her. But she also knew it was the safest option, for now.

And maybe it was a little ironic for her to be considering safety as she threw caution to the wind to complete this small project. Tony would probably have a fit when he found out, and maybe he was right, but Sunny couldn't very well go to Monaco dressed like he was on his way to the gym, or preparing for a busy day of doing nothing. Sunny needed real clothes, and this was the best way she could figure out how to get them to him, as well as allowing him to experiment with the concept of choices. The sunglasses weren't a _necessity_ , exactly. Still, why not? "Cool colors," Sunny said without inflection as he drew them off of his face to inspect them. She'd since learned this way of speaking was an attempt at eliciting more information about something he didn't understand without asking a direct question. She tried not to think about how or why he'd developed a habit like that.

"You know, your blues, greens, violets, silvers. Not to say you couldn't wear warm ones if you wanted. It's your choice, obviously," she continued, even if she didn't see him actually making choices for himself anytime soon. As a challenge to the cynical thoughts-or maybe an affirmation of them-she asked, "Do you like having long hair?"

"The hair is irrelevant to its functioning."

She briefly hummed along with the music playing quietly. That noise was filler to give herself time to figure out how best to approach the issue of teaching another human being how to like or dislike things, if it was something she could even accomplish. It was the kind of lesson most people didn't need to be taught, so there wasn't exactly a standardized approach. "Do you really think it's irrelevant, or do you just not have an opinion? Because that's okay too you know, to not care one way or the other."

Sunny didn't answer right away, which she took to be a good sign. Hopefully it meant he was thinking it over. "It is irrelevant to its functioning." So much for that.

"Hm. Well, for the record, you look just fine with long hair, when it's taken care of. Brushed and shampooed and conditioned." Hygiene had been one of Tony's first lessons. Apparently Sunny expressed some confusion over the shower. When asked how he kept himself clean, he'd tentatively responded that standard protocol involved a hose. Pepper hadn't wanted to hear the rest, especially since Tony tended to couch horrifying things like that in light-hearted jokes. "It'd look better if we trimmed the split ends off, but I guess that's the least of your concerns."

Sunny touched his hair and said, "Split ends."

"When not treated well, your hair gets damaged over time and the strands can split. See?" Cautious and very aware of the risk, she took a few locks between her fore and middle finger, trying to show him. He narrowed his eyes with that laser focus, but didn't seem upset that she was touching him. Of course, Tony had ordered him not to injure anyone, but none of them could know with complete certainty that Sunny would actually listen. Things had run smoothly so far, but she hadn't exactly been present as often as Tony.

"Damage is undesirable."

"Well it's nothing serious. It won't hurt you or anything. But still." She shrugged. "Appearances are everything for people like me, whether I like it or not. If _I_ went out with split-ends, I'd get thrown under the bus by some gossip rag for letting my life fall apart or something."

This got Sunny's attention, given Tony's mandate that she ranked higher on the totem pole than the alleged 'director'. "It would not let you be run over by a bus."

She held back a smile and shook her head. So maybe it wasn't herself and Tony she needed to be concerned about getting injured. The paparazzi probably had it coming, though. "No, not a literal bus. It's a phrase. It's like, everyone would pick on me for it, even if it's so...unimportant, in the overall scheme of things."

She thought Sunny lost interest because he was back to folding and unfolding the glasses. But then he said, "Your hair-" He cocked his head, and his brows came together in an unusual show of...well, she wasn't sure what. It was like confusion, she thought. He'd been confused plenty. He seemed to think _they_ were the weird ones for letting him use a shower and eat food whenever he wanted. But this was a little different in a way she couldn't quite place. It was like he was searching for something he thought he should know instead of struggling for things he knew he didn't have. "Its color is similar to-" He shifted his weight, looked down at the glasses then back at Pepper. "Sarah?"

His eyes dropped immediately after uttering the name, as if he'd just said something obscene in front of his mom. Pepper tried to keep her tone light, afraid of how he might interpret her concern. "Oh? Who's Sarah?"

He stared at the glasses in his hands, clearly deep in thought. He couldn't hide anything in his face and in a way that made her sad because she knew he probably hadn't been _allowed_ to hide anything. To keep anything just for himself. It was like Tony said-if you went to the trouble of brainwashing and programming someone into complete obedience, you probably wouldn't make it easy for them to deceive you. "Sarah. It does not know anyone by that designation." He shook his head quickly and she really wanted to ask if he was lying to her. But then she didn't want to make him feel threatened. Maybe he just couldn't remember and was afraid she'd punish him for admitting that. "It thinks your hair is undamaged," he said quickly, as if to distract her from the perceived misstep of being unable to address who Sarah was.

She'd let him have it, even if she'd make sure to remember the name for later. It probably wouldn't ever amount to anything. After all, how many Sarahs were there in the world? "Thank you Sunny." She brushed her hands over the tops of his shoulders, straightening the fabric out. This was maybe the third shirt he'd tried on, but it was still hard to get over the difference, the way the left shoulder felt so rigid and hard in a way the right one didn't. "You don't look like you enjoy button downs too much. Thoughts?"

"This shirt restricts its range of motion. That is unsafe. It may be torn easily during combat. That is a waste of resources."

"I see. So it's too constricting." Even if she thought he didn't need to pick his clothing based on how it'd feel in the middle of a fight, he'd basically admitted he found the clothes uncomfortable. So she wasn't going to make him wear them. "Okay. Let's try..." Her fingers flew over the items on the rack, brushing by other similar shirts and even one or two very nice collared shirts that'd go well under suit jackets that she just honestly never saw Sunny wearing with any enthusiasm. She settled on a more plain and casual shirt. The sort of thing that looked like you could find in any department store for a fraction of what it undoubtedly cost her. She told herself the price tag was for the craftsmanship, and the assurance that it wasn't made from exploited labor. "How about this one? Simple, comfortable, functional."

He took it without protest and started to unbutton his shirt. She still had a very difficult time looking at him when she could see the place where the metal slipped into his skin. It seemed to only remind her about where Sunny may have come from. That even if it ended up not being HYDRA, _someone_ had torn a human being apart and put him back together again like he was a toy. It brought her back half a year ago, when Tony escaped his own horrifying ordeal in that cave. Those kinds of thoughts led her down an anger and pity spiral that wasn't helpful for anyone.

So she made herself focus on the present. The shirt fit Sunny well, showing off the curve of his toned chest without being too clingy and tight. She noticed he never really looked in the mirror for himself, just waited for her to tell him what she thought of it. She didn't know if that was because he considered her a superior and thought his opinion was meaningless, or if he just didn't quite grasp clothing preferences yet. So she asked, "What do you think?" in as neutral a tone as possible to avoid coloring his perception.

Instead of looking in the mirror he looked down at himself. Then he moved his arms, testing the limits of the fabric apparently. "It is acceptable."

"Just acceptable? Could it be better?"

He thought for a moment and she expected something like 'it could be softer' or 'can I try another size' or something like that. But he said, "It could be made with kevlar inserts to better protect vulnerable areas."

Needless to say, she hadn't ordered anything that was going to meet his standards. She supposed he'd accept that without much complaint, seeing as how he wasn't really given to complaints to begin with. "Well, I'll take that into consideration," she said. "But neither myself nor Tony plan on putting you in situations that require you to wear armor." That was what she wanted to be true, at least. Something told her that they may as well have hung a banner on the tower inviting any and every psychopath to come in for a fight by Tony revealing himself as Iron Man. The addition of the top secret super-soldier was probably going to do little to diminish that likelihood. "Hopefully," she amended. She just couldn't say with complete confidence that there wouldn't be _any_ kind of violence in their futures.

"It is required to take appropriate defensive measures to ensure minimal damage."

Pepper nodded. "I agree. And the best way to ensure you aren't hurt is to not fight at all, right?"

Sunny stared at her like she was unbelievable for suggesting that nonviolence was even an option. "It is made for...fighting." He said the last word as if he'd suspected she'd used it incorrectly. He seemed to want to correct the terminology but she figured he must've considered that as overstepping his bounds. Too close to implying that his superior was in the wrong.

"You weren't _made_ for anything. No one has a right to tell you what your purpose is."

She predicted saying that would result in more staring, and sure enough, that's just what happened.

"What I mean is," she continued after leaving a sufficient enough pause for a response, "is that Tony and I, we don't operate the same way as your...former bosses." It was the best phrase she could come up with. "We don't want you to hurt anyone. And we don't want _you_ to get hurt, either."

"It is made for hurting," Sunny said, again like he couldn't grasp how his superior could be so grossly misinformed about the reason for his existence.

It was tempting to beg him not to say things like that, but what good would that do _him?_ It'd just make him think there were things he wasn't allowed to express, and that was the last thing she wanted. "Maybe that was the case before, but it isn't now," she said. There was no sense trying to talk to him like a normal person who just needed a little convincing, because there was pretty much nothing normal about him. "How about this? I'd like for you to find out what makes you feel good and happy. Do you understand that?"

Sunny shifted his weight, something she realized was so unconsciously done by regular people but a thing she hadn't ever seen him do before. She realized what she'd just asked him had made him supremely uncomfortable. But what was she supposed to do here? Let him continue to believe his sole reason for existing was to do harm to others because someone told him to? Let him languish in some weird limbo where he'd been stripped of all purpose by telling him not to hurt anyone anymore without giving him something else to focus on? Before Sunny could inevitably inform her that no, he didn't understand, she pressed on. "This is by no means a requirement. It's just something for you to think about, if you decide you want to." It probably wasn't a good idea for her to try to fix him. Tony was in the process of hiring someone to specifically do just that, if it was even possible. So maybe she was only making things worse, in some way.

There was relative silence as she let Sunny have a moment to work out the confusing mess she'd just laid on him. She busied herself by pulling off some of the clothes from the rack. The items he'd indicated as uncomfortable stayed put while she arranged the others in the closet. She wasn't sure what used to be stored in here-probably whatever tools Tony needed at the time. There was nothing in it now but the clothes she'd just placed there. Nothing else in the entire room, really. A bed that was studiously made. Pepper ordered food and made it Tony's responsibility to bring it to the room. It was mostly for Sunny's sake, but partly for Tony's. She thought it might help him remember his own meals, too.

She transferred the last of the clothes to their new spot and stepped back. It was eight days worth of clothing. Other than the initial few pairs of sweat pants and shirts kept neatly folded in a single drawer, Sunny had nothing to call his own. Did he even _want_ to own anything? She looked around, but there really was no clues to be gleaned about the person who lived here.

"They can not have fun."

The statement came out of left field and seemed to be totally unprompted. None of the clothing had words or images on it, and there wasn't anything else here to distract him. So of course she had to ask, "Who?"

His eyes flicked up towards the ceiling then back to her. "The girls. They just want to have fun. But fun is not permitted."

The music. She'd practically blocked it out, having relegated it to white noise while she'd been thinking. She nearly laughed herself to tears but managed to instead clear her throat to avoid humiliating Sunny for what he'd said. He hadn't asked a question outright, of course, but it felt all the same like he wanted more information about the subject. "Well, it used to be that people only wanted girls to behave certain ways, to only let them fill a few restricted roles. And I guess people are still like that, some people. Less, but still enough to be a problem."

"A problem," he repeated.

"First, let me say you're allowed to ask us questions." Even questions spawned from the lyrics of a poppy song she enjoyed. "But as for why it's a problem, I guess it comes down to a control and power thing. The more power that's shared, the less certain people have, and they don't like that. It's a complicated subject, really, and I'm sure there are people way better at explaining it than me."

"People can not control themselves. It hurts them."

She bit her lip as she held back her initial reaction to a statement like that: _what a load of crap_. "Well, maybe some people have self-control issues. But that doesn't mean no one deserves freedom."

"Freedom causes suffering. It is not better to suffer in order to have it."

"Well-" She tilted her head. "Being controlled can cause suffering, too. It's best to have freedom and no suffering, I think. Don't you?"

Sunny seemed perplexed that she'd bothered to ask for his opinion at all but he answered all the same. "It is impossible to have freedom and no suffering if freedom is the reason for suffering."

She frowned. Talk about indoctrination. Who came up with this garbage? "Compared to where you were before, do you have more freedom now?"

He seemed to think it over for a minute, as if literally quantifying and collating each instance of what he may have considered 'freedom' over the course of his life. She could practically picture him comparing two columns of scores in his head. He nodded slowly without speaking.

"And do you think your suffering has increased, or decreased?" She didn't know if it was right of her to ask him that. For one, he'd been here barely a week. And maybe he'd just tell her whatever he thought she wanted to hear either way. The thought briefly crossed her mind that he may tell her things had been worse for him since he came here, given the amount of inner turmoil and confusion they'd apparently caused him. If that was the case, what was she supposed to do to change that?

Again he shifted his weight, and his arms almost came up to cross over his chest before he stopped himself. Every muscle seemed tense with the effort of forcing himself to stay still but she didn't think telling him he was free to move would do anything to alleviate his discomfort. "Tentative review of the asset's time spent under Directors Stark and Potts suggests it has suffered less punishment and physical injury when compared to previous directors." She smiled and she really felt it. If he could admit to himself and her that things were better for him here, surely it meant he could be helped. He looked at her and he seemed almost lost, maybe even frustrated by his self-evaluation. "How?" he asked.

"When we have our choices taken away, it makes things harder for us. We suffer because we can't decide anything for ourselves. And the people deciding for us, they might not care about how we feel, or if we're hurting. They probably don't have our best interests in mind. Maybe you knew people like that before. Who didn't care if you were hurting or not." He neither confirmed or denied anything, but the look on his face made it seem like he felt his world was collapsing around him. She frowned and resisted the urge to put a hand on his arm. There was no telling how he'd react, and a part of her was ready to panic at the realization that this whole conversation might make him snap. "Well look, Sunny. All I'm trying to say is that I care if you're hurting. And I want you to be allowed to make your own decisions about things, too. When you're ready. It's okay if you aren't for now, but Tony and I, we're going to help you figure that out."

It was hard to tell how he was processing the new information. His eyes were hard and his brows were drawn together, again every inch of him seeming tensed and ready for the reveal that this had all been a joke, or maybe a test of some kind. Maybe that was why he stayed quiet. If you don't give any answer, it can't be wrong. Despite how badly she wanted to know what he was thinking, she wasn't going to pressure him to respond. That'd be directly contradictory to what she just told him, forcing him to answer after just expounding on how she wanted him to choose things for himself. So if he wanted to stay quiet, he could. And if he decided to speak, she'd listen.


	7. McRib is Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everybody. I feel I really owe an apology to all the readers of this story for taking so long to update even as I worked on other projects. I'll be honest in that I have never received such a large amount of attention on any story I have ever written, and I have been writing fanfics since I was in third grade. So I got a little nervous about whatever I posted being a disappointment and sort of froze up, which is admittedly silly because it's just fanfiction. And maybe no more posts would be much more disappointing than anything I could actually write. So anyway! Here is the next chapter, thanks for your patience, and hopefully it will not take such a long time for me to write the next one...! :))
> 
> (also an aside about the text...some of my keyboard is getting finicky, notably spacebar, c and m, so i'm trying really hard to catch typos there but may have missed some!!)

"So you opened a box, found a guy with a metal robot arm inside, realized he's on par with Captain America in terms of super strength, had the guy tell you he was an assassin...and you decided to keep him and name him after a damn orange drink?"

"It's not about the _drink_ _._ God, why does everyone go right to that?" Tony said with a sigh. Sunny continued his expedition into the darkest recesses of the five hundred count box of Kleenex. Why, Tony had no idea. The best he could figure was maybe he thought there was something dangerous hiding in the box. But Tony wasn't going to take it away from him, even as a pile of unused tissues grew on the floor at his feet. "It's the irony of a robotic killing machine being named something so peppy and upbeat. Okay?"

Rhodey sighed and shook his head. "Tony, do you even know what you're getting into here?"

"Eh," he said with a shrug. Anyone else would've interpreted that as Tony being his usual flippant self. Rhodey was smart though, and that's why Tony liked him.   
  
"Yeah, you do know that you don't know, and you'd rather attempt to resolve a potentially dangerous variable than admit there are things you don't have the answers to," Rhodey answered with something like a worried smile. Was that even a possible emotion, amused concern?   
  
Tony wiggled his fingers in the air. Rhodey spoke jazz fingers, so he understood he'd hit the nail on the head. So Tony sighed and had to at least try to defend his risky decision here. "I'm more interested in finding out who's out there with anywhere from one to a hundred super soldiers that no one knew about until now."

"Just a hundred."  
  
"I mean theoretically there could be more, but I thought a hundred was a pretty generous possibility." Very generous. If somebody had recreated enough serum to bestow on more than a few individuals, word would've gotten out somehow. The fewer there were, the easier they'd be to hide.  
  
Rhodey sighed and shook his head. Then he glanced at the murderbot standing at the other work space dissecting the Kleenex before leaning closer to Tony. "Around the time the Soviet Union dissolved, people at work started talking. We all figured that it was just pranks. Stupid jokes. My CO at the time laughed and told me it was a hazing thing. To scare new recruits with. Stories about the immortal Winter Soldier."

That was intriguing. In telling Rhodey about the newest member of the Stark Industries family, Tony hadn't mentioned the title 'Winter Soldier'. Rhodey having heard it elsewhere meant some small group of people had to know of Sunny. People other than the assassin's former bosses. Unless said former bosses had moved on to other lines of work. Like the military or government, apparently. That notion planted a very ugly little seed that Tony's paranoid brain would happily fertilize. Either the government had known about one of HYDRA's old pet projects and somehow acquired him for their own ends, or HYDRA was still a thing, and had potentially wormed its way into places it had no business being. "Proceed," Tony said.

Rhodey lowered his voice, as if to heighten the suspense. "They said he'd been responsible for thousands of deaths in the last century. That he could tear you apart with his bare hands. That he was inhumanly quick. That the gleam you saw right before he put a bullet in your brain wasn't the reflection off his scope but body parts that had been replaced with robotic limbs. That he couldn't be killed. That he never missed a target, and never left a witness."

Tony snorted as obnoxiously as he could without flinging snot everywhere. Most of it did, indeed, sound like the kind of outlandish urban legends kids told each other at slumber parties to scare everyone. Or, this is what the movies led Tony to believe, anyway. "They always say that. If it's true, how do any of these stories get out?" It was a little interesting though, that the kernels of truth in the legend such as the metal limb and super strength got paired to the identity of the Winter Soldier. And it was all brought up because of happenings in Russia. Someone had stretched and distorted the truth, for whatever reason, but it was too close to correct to be a complete coincidence.

Rhodey shrugged. "Okay, but it sounds an awful lot like your Sunny. Face it, Tony. You bought and are now in command of history's most deadly and vicious assassin."

A soft gasp brought both of their attentions to Sunny. Tony tensed, certain his and Rhodey's conversation had jogged some unpleasant memory or murderous protocol. But once he looked over, it seemed like Sunny had zero interest in the discussion, wide eyes fixed completely on his work. His metal hand was hovering just above the next tissue sticking out of the box, one of the yellowish ones that meant there were only a few left. His face held a mildly startled expression and Tony saw the pile on the table before him was all white tissues so it was probably the first yellow one he'd seen. "You reached the gold at the end of the rainbow there?" Tony asked. He couldn't tell if he should feel more silly about thinking he was about to be blown away by a guy this fascinated by Kleenex or the second-hand embarrassment that a grown man was this fascinated by Kleenex.

"It was not prepared for a change in procedure," Sunny murmured almost reverently as he slowly tugged out the tissue and inspected it closer, as if there would be other differences.

Tony turned a critical eye back to Rhodey. "Yep, terrifying, isn't he?" he asked before returning to his computer. Jarvis was still digging around for any glimpses of Sunny. It was a lot of information to sort through and progress felt entirely too slow. Other than that, Tony just had to worry about finding cures for the thing poisoning him to death and contingency plans revolving around all of the other important things in his life that would need taken care of if he couldn't. Typical, everyday superhero stuff.

"Tony, you need to take this seriously. For your own safety. For Pepper's safety."

"Sunny, what's our rule about Pepper?" he asked without looking away from his monitor. The rule was something he'd come up with after she'd displayed an alarming level of disregard for her own well-being by playing dress up with Sunny. Potentially triggering a superpowered assassin into a murder rage was the kind of thing Tony was supposed to do, not her. That train of thought led to Tony wondering what would happen to Pepper if he died quicker than he originally anticipated. If the suits were still here when he did, someone would come for them, and there was no telling what they'd do to get them. She could use protection, and thus, the rule was born. Sunny didn't have to be in close quarters with Pepper to execute it, and Pepper still got the top notch protection she deserved. Everybody won. Except Tony, who was dead in this scenario.

Sunny stood up straighter and explained the rule clearly to Rhodey, a display of his utter dedication to his assignments. "Miss Potts is to be protected at all costs. Any individual with intent to harm Miss Potts is to be met with whatever force is deemed necessary, up to and including lethal."

Tony mock-beamed like a parent proud of their honor roll student crushing it at the spelling bee. Another item he'd learned from the movies. Rhodey didn't seem impressed. He leaned onto the arm of his chair and watched Sunny thoughtfully for a moment. "So if I mugged Pepper right now, what would you do?"

"Restrain target." Sunny pulled out another Kleenex, slowly, as if this kind of discussion were second-nature. Uninteresting, a formality, easiest question on the test. "If target resits further, disable primary methods of locomotion. Example: fracture tibia, dislocate hips and/or shoulders." He rubbed the tissue in the fingers of his right hand before laying it flat on the table with utmost care, unlike all those hundreds of boring white tissues that came before it. "If target presents lethal threat, a lethal response will be applied. It may grip target by throat with the left hand, apply pressure, remove the larynx and sever the carotid artery in the process." He laid another one of the yellow tissues out flat beside the first two. "Other possible modes of action include gouging the eyes to reach the brain, disengaging the nasal bones from the skull and driving them into the brain with the heel of the hand-" Sunny stopped when he pulled out the last Kleenex, fingers scraping around inside the box like he might find a straggler, completely oblivious to the cringe of disgust that had begun to flourish on his audience's faces.

"That's enough," Tony said. He didn't like hearing about the nitty gritty when it came to how someone else would kill a person. And so clinically, on top of it. Maybe he had been treating Sunny's lethality as something abstract. But now that he spelled out so simply and cleanly how he'd end a life, it made the threat a little more real. Even if Sunny had spent his time here scarfing down donuts and trying on clothes, it didn't change the fact that this was a person who'd been made into a perfect killer with no regard for himself or the pain he'd inflict on others. Tony didn't want to wait for proof of that statement to manifest itself in some horrific bloodbath involving the people he cared about.

"Understood."

"Give me-" Tony snatched the Kleenex box in a sudden fit of irritation. All of this made him supremely uncomfortable and wasn't going as he'd planned. What had Pepper been thinking? What had _he_ been thinking, bringing someone as dangerous as Sunny here and leaving him so unguarded? He wanted to draw out whoever made the assassin the way he was, but the concern in Rhodey's voice made him feel almost _ashamed_ which was not a setting Tony Stark was supposed to have. What else was he supposed to do? Boot Sunny out the door and wish him luck on not being snatched up by whoever got to him first? Stick him in a mental institution where he would probably just end up right back where he started?   
  
Sunny surrendered the Kleenex box without protest, and Tony tossed it into a waste basket but then wondered why he bothered when there were five hundred tissues on the ground. Rhodey raised his eyebrows and shot Tony a 'what are you doing with yourself' kind of look. "So you're sure the best idea is keeping him around?"  
  
Tony was not one for faltering and he was never much of a pushover. But the careful tone in Rhodey's voice, the one that was so obviously worried for everyone's safety, almost made him. "It's a little hard to know who to trust with a thi-" He briefly squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head at the awful misstep he'd almost taken. "With a person like him." He'd already hashed all this out with Pepper. He knew this was the best way to proceed. Surrendering Sunny to anyone else could just have him back where he started and with Tony none the wiser about whatever hidden threats were now so obviously out there. Threats that had potentially infiltrated the military and government, no less.  
  
"I get that, Tony. I really do. But are you really prepared for what kind of problems he might bring your way? I don't just mean the people who are looking for him, either."  
  
Tony stared at the table where Sunny had collected his eight yellow tissues. He was folding them back along their original creases, and stacking them carefully, like they were the most valuable things he'd ever held. Fucking tissue paper. What the hell had happened to this guy? And who did Tony think he was that he had any chance at fixing it or preventing it from continuing? He blinked away the doubt before looking back at Rhodey and said immediately, "I've got it under control."  
  
Rhodey didn't seem convinced, and was still a little uncertain of what to do about any of it yet. But Rhodey was smart, and that's why Tony liked him, so he'd think of something and they'd debate it again sometime. If something drastic and deadly didn't happen first. "It was nice meeting you, Sunny," Rhodey said as he stood up.

"Nice," Sunny echoed, gripping his tissues a little tighter like they might be snatched at any moment. Tony sighed and stood up to walk Rhodey to the elevator.   
  
"Thanks for finding time to stop in," Tony said. He didn't want the conversation to drift back to his potentially poor decision making skills.   
  
"It's no problem. You guys headed back to Malibu after Monaco?" Rhodey asked.  
  
"Yeah, if everything goes as planned."  
  
Rhodey smirked. "Things going as planned isn't typical for you so I'll keep an eye on the headlines."  
  
"Oh, ha. Ha. And ha. Don't be jealous you aren't able to enjoy a lovely vacation on the Mediterranean." It wasn't exactly a vacation, definitely not now with all he had to work out with Hammer. But Tony was good at making the best of things.  
  
"You're there to watch cars go in circles for a couple hours and give interviews to journalists who ask the same five questions you've gotten since you took over the company. Yeah, I'm real jealous," Rhodey shot back, smacking him on the shoulder. The playful expression faded a little and Tony braced himself for what was coming next. "Take care of yourself, Tony. You can't save anybody if you don't do that first."  
  
Genuine displays of concern for him made him vaguely uncomfortable so he had no choice but to deflect. He blew a raspberry like the very mature, genius, billionaire he was and lightly shoved Rhodey into the open elevator. "We'll see about that." Rhodey rolled his eyes but they exchanged the usual good-byes before the doors closed. Tony turned away and looked back towards the workshop he'd just come from. He had a flight to prepare for.

* * *

Pepper knew it was an argument she wasn't going to win but at least she'd tried. She couldn't begin to catalog the reasons this was a bad idea. Even if she liked Sunny, there were too many things they didn't know about him. Being in a room alone with him in a tower full of people, while under surveillance by Jarvis, was an entirely different level of risk in her mind compared to trapping themselves in a pressurized metal cylinder a few thousand feet in the air with no escape if things went south.

But then maybe she was just too used to things with Tony blowing up into some big problem. Sunny had been fine while she helped him pack for the trip. He'd been utterly confused by the notion, reminding her that his BDUs should be sufficient for a three day assignment. After asking Jarvis what the hell BDUs were, she felt her heart sink just a little before she wound up the effort to explain to him that he wasn't on an assignment, and that he wasn't expected to fight or injure anyone. Just the opposite, in fact. She tried not to think too hard about the pure confusion that came over him when she explained she didn't want him to hurt anyone at all.   
  
Now Sunny spent most of the flight staring blankly at the headrest of the seat in front of him. He only spoke when spoken to, and even that wasn't a guarantee. Pepper's eyes would wander to his left arm, which was mostly covered by the sleeve of the jacket they'd agreed on. Something simple and functional that she probably could've found in a dumpster near an outlet mall. But that wasn't the point. Even though it was warm in Monaco, they didn't have much of a choice when it came to hiding his arm. Tony said he'd make sure Sunny kept to the hotel room, but she wasn't so sure how he was going to enforce that if he was busy mingling all day at the race and its surrounding events.

But again, it could've been slight paranoia on her part. Sunny was quiet and soft-spoken, never irate or frightened or much of anything, really. It was disturbing and sad all at once, how completely reserved he was. It was hard to understand until she was actually in his presence just how profoundly messed up he was. It made her think about Tony's assessment of the situation, whether this behavior was forced into him or not. And how couldn't it be? No one was naturally like this. It was almost enough to make her believe the story about Hydra. Definitely enough to make her hesitant to reveal to anyone that Tony Stark was currently housing him. Someone knew who and what Sunny was, and that someone was probably not going to be happy with this situation.

She'd tried to ask Sunny some questions about Justin in preparation for the little interrogation Tony had planned. After each one, he'd always look for Tony first, who initially gawked back and said, "What? She asked you." The glances didn't stop, though, and finally they realized what he was doing. He was asking permission to answer the question. Every. Individual. Question. She felt sick and it wasn't because of the plane ride.

That was about the time Tony made it worse, as he often does before making it better. "New rule, sunshine," Tony said. He seemed to be getting more comfortable being under that intense gaze Sunny had. It was, after all, pretty difficult to deter or intimidate Tony. She didn't know if she wanted to share that trait right now or not. "Pepper is my number two-my also number one." He corrected himself quickly and she couldn't completely suppress the smirk. "My equal, there we go, the word I was looking for. I don't often use that phrase so it was kind of stuck." Sunny's focus was quickly dissolving into mild confusion so Tony shook his head. "Anyway, point being, your new guideline is this: You are always allowed to answer any questions Pepper asks you even though I'm present. And listen to her when she tells you to do something."

"Tony, I don't know if I like-" she started to say but wasn't sure how to finish the sentence. She thought it might offend Sunny but then felt worse when she realized he probably wouldn't have the presence of mind to be offended.

"It recognizes Pepper Potts as an authorized user," Sunny said.

"No," Pepper said, maintaining eye contact as long as she could. It wasn't easy. She faced down businessmen and politicians and CEOs of the biggest, most powerful companies on the planet and had no trouble with it. She knew how to be the fluffiest brick wall possible. But this was a whole different ball game. "I'm not going to use you."

"Yeah, none of us want to see that," Tony muttered.

Pepper continued, ignoring the innuendo. It was second-nature with Tony. "What we're trying to say is that you don't need to feel uncomfortable answering my questions without Tony's permission. You're allowed to ask questions, of anyone, regardless of any kind of...ranking system." 

Sunny stared at her some more until his eyes wandered back to Tony. "It does not understand 'uncomfortable'."

This was much, much worse than puppies with casts on their tiny, little paws.

"Just listen to what I told you, okay?" Tony said, clearly exasperated. He didn't have the patience to explain the concept right now and Pepper was close to horrified over the fact that Sunny needed it explained to begin with.

"Affirmative."

"Well wait," Pepper said, stuffing all that unsettling feeling in a place where she didn't have to think about it right away. "This is something you should understand. Tony, we have to do better than just ignoring things like that."

Tony blew out an exaggerated breath but he said, "Fine, I'll get him a dictionary. Happy?"  
  
There was a ding over the intercom before Pepper got the chance to argue further. The pilot was announcing their descent. It was a conversation she was willing to pick up at a future time. She knew, too, that Tony would take her point to heart, even if he wouldn't vocalize it. He always had a lot on his mind and he probably had a constantly-shifting list of priorities as a result. She was sure this problem was on it. It was just a matter of which position it'd taken at the current moment.   
  
Outside it was dark, and she could see the curve of the coast laid out in bright lights far below. It was always a pretty sight, coming in to an airport for a landing, especially in a city like this one. She looked down at her phone to review their itinerary, making certain everything was in order one final time. Then she went back to reading through the last batch of applications for the assistant position left vacant by Natalie Rushman's abrupt departure. It was a dream job, so of course there were an ungodly amount of applications to go over. Jarvis was very helpful in filtering out people who didn't meet the criteria but optimistically applied anyway.  
  
"Ever been to Monaco?" Tony asked, not even looking up from his own phone. She knew the question wasn't directed at her. She hoped, anyway, considering they'd made this same trip this time last year.   
  
But Sunny didn't answer. Pepper glanced up to see why. He was watching Happy's screen one seat up. A baseball game was on. She'd never had a lot of time to invest in a hobby like keeping up with sports. The games simply took too long to watch, and just hearing about the results afterwards wasn't interesting enough for her to follow a team that way.   
  
Tony, of course, noticed that Sunny's attention had been taken up by something else. Which, admittedly, was a bit of a shock given his dedication to following orders. So Tony asked, "How're the Cubbies doing, Hap?"  
  
Happy snorted. "God awful."  
  
"Who've you got your money on, Sunny?" Tony asked.   
  
That jolted him back to reality, apparently, and he abruptly sat up straighter. He blinked once before answering, "It has no money, sir."   
  
"That's not-" Tony started, but he shook his head. He pointed to Happy's screen. "The baseball game. You looked pretty interested. Have a favorite team?"  
  
Sunny stared at Tony and for once it was less that he seemed confused and more that he seemed uncertain about giving an answer. Even Happy glanced away from his game to listen for a response. He'd gotten a run down on Sunny for the trip and wasn't too pleased about the whole thing. Pepper thought it was nice to have someone to talk about what a bad idea it was to bring him.   
  
Finally, Sunny's eyes wandered back to Happy's screen and he said. "Brooklyn." He squinted, like he was struggling to find the rest of the sentence in some dimly lit corner of his mind. "The Dodgers."  
  
Happy laughed. "They haven't been in Brooklyn since the fifties, buddy."  
  
Sunny looked down at his hands in his lap. Now he seemed concerned about something, brows furrowed. Maybe about being mistaken about what city the Dodgers were currently associated with.   
  
Tony took an immediate interest in this. "When's the last time you watched a game, Sunny?"  
  
"It does not have the requested information." Pepper thought she picked up a thread of fear in his quiet, low voice, and she watched him carefully. What would someone like him do if he felt backed into a corner by them?  
  
"But you're into the Dodgers nonetheless," Tony said. He hummed in interest at that.   
  
Sunny stared at the floor now, eyes gone wide and blank. His hands were curling into fists beside his thighs. Pepper couldn't tear her eyes away, afraid of what might happen when she wasn't looking. "Tony. I think you should leave him alone."  
  
"Just trying to have a friendly conversation," Tony responded. "You can watch baseball if you want, Sunny. Sounds like you have a lot of catching up to do, anyway."  
  
"It is obligated to inform you that it is experiencing malfunctions and maintenance may be required imminently," Sunny managed to respond.  
  
That was just the kind of thing you wanted to hear at the beginning of a weekend at a resort full of people and loud noises from the nearby racetrack.   
  
Again, Tony didn't seem perturbed. "Really, that's a new one. What does it mean for you to be malfunctioning?"  
  
Sunny's right hand came up, no longer balled into a fist, and Pepper allowed herself a moment of relief. He held the fingers gingerly to his temple. "White noise," he said, like he was echoing a term he didn't fully understand.  
  
"You get headaches?" Tony asked. He was typing into his phone as he spoke and even though Pepper spent much of her day on tablets and phones, she couldn't match his keystrokes if she tried.  
  
"No, sir."  
  
"Then what?"  
  
Sunny dropped his hand to his lap. And then he shrugged. Pepper was at least happy to see that she wasn't the only one startled by Sunny using such a casual, dare she say, human gesture. Tony's brows quirked up but he mentioned nothing of it. She almost did and thought better of it. Maybe she would've meant to encourage Sunny. But she realized just before opening her mouth to speak that he might not take it that way at all. He might instead see any comment on his shift in behavior as a threat, a reminder to not indulge in it again.   
  
So instead, before Tony could press Sunny any further, she leaned towards him and said, "We'll be landing soon. The hotel is a short drive from the airport and then you can get some rest. Maybe you'll feel better in the morning."  
  
He watched her as he spoke and she swore he wasn't seeing her. She had no idea why she felt that, but it was a thought that wouldn't leave her, even once he said, "Yes, ma'am." He said nothing else, keeping his eyes fixed ahead of him. She sat back in her own chair and looked to Tony.   
  
Tony turned up his hands in a helpless gesture but didn't bother Sunny again. As had been said so many times before, they were in uncharted territory. It wasn't a place she liked to be, but she had no choice now but to keep pushing through and hope for the best.

* * *

"Anyone get hired for the job yet?" she asked, snatching a few of Clint's fries once he sat at her table.  
  
"Right to business, huh? No thanks for the food? Not even gonna ask?"  
  
"I seem to recall some idiot teaching me that it was an important aspect of American culture that if you showed up anywhere with fries that you were required to share them," she answered. She didn't even like McDonald's, but the fries were better than the soggy ones on offer in the SHIELD cafeteria today.   
  
"Yeah we also have this thing called the free market," Clint answered, popping open the cardboard box with a messy sandwich in it.  
  
She stared at him, plainly letting her confusion show. He didn't elaborate, taking a bite of food instead like it was self-evident. "What on Earth does that mean?" she asked finally.  
  
"Means...you are _free_ to go out on the lunch time restaurant _market_ and get your own damn fries and McRib."  
  
She snorted and turned back to her own meal instead. "For the record, I would never eat a McRib, whatever that is." She knew what it was meant to be, but that didn't mean she knew what was actually in that spongy patty of meat drowned in barbecue sauce.  
  
Clint made a noise as if deeply wounded. "But Natasha. It's _back._ You have to eat a McRib during McRib season."  
  
"It's always back. It's called a marketing ploy." She took a few more fries for good measure. Clint didn't need a large fry all to himself anyway. This was for his health. "Are you going to answer my question or not?"  
  
"Fine, fine." He took one of her orange wedges. "Nobody's been hired yet. Which is unusual."  
  
"Stark's traveling right now. He'll probably put off his decision til he gets back stateside," Natasha answered easily.  
  
"Yeah, I guess, but the suits are a little antsy about it. They can't monitor him and his new assassin buddy so easily if they aren't in America. More red tape and complications." He took another bite and a glob of brown sauce dropped out of the back of his sandwich. It landed in his lap with a very gross splat. "Aw, McRib, no..."  
  
Clint was right about that. With no mole, it was impossible to get much information about what was going on and she felt painfully blind. It was a huge risk, taking the Winter Soldier to a crowded, public event. She hoped against hope that Stark had contingency plans in place for the worst possibilities but the fact that he'd taken the Soldier to begin with suggested that he hadn't considered them at all. "I guess we have to resort to monitoring what channels are available to us. We can't afford-"  
  
Suddenly Clint kicked her shin and hissed, "Drakkar Noir inbound, your twelve o'clock."  
  
She stared at him for a second, wondering why he always thought she had a direct link to his brain. Then she pressed her lips into a thin line and kicked him back.  
  
"Ow! What'd you do that for?" he whispered quickly.  
  
She wasn't required to answer. Another agent approached the table, one she recognized due to his seniority. Brock Rumlow was commander of STRIKE team alpha, which as the name suggested, was the most special of special ops in SHIELD. Only the most elite people were placed on his team. Their jobs were high risk and high stress, but Rumlow knew how to compartmentalize and that fact never showed in much else besides tired lines around his eyes. "Agent Romanoff," he said with a nod of greeting. He glanced at Clint who simply got, "Barton."   
  
Clint was not a fan of Brock and that wasn't exactly a secret. Much as Natasha disagreed with the policy, Clint was prohibited from being enlisted with team alpha due to his disability. He'd been told by the suits that they couldn't risk his hearing aids failing in a vital moment, even if the chances of that happening were insignificant. Clint believed that was just their official excuse and that Rumlow had something to do with him being barred from the team. "What's up," Clint answered distractedly, his meal suddenly much more important.   
  
"You've got, uh, sauce-" Brock gestured to his shirt.  
  
"I'm aware," Clint said before Brock had even finished speaking. He took another, larger bite while keeping eye contact with Brock, ejecting even more sauce from the soggy bun. Natasha closed her eyes briefly and sighed. "Good shit," he said around a mouthful of food.  
  
Brock managed to keep a straight face instead of a disgusted one. A lot of things were said about people in positions of power but Natasha could at least say Brock maintained professionalism in spite of how difficult it could be at times. He turned his attention back to Natasha and said, "Normally this kind of thing is handled in a more, uh, private setting." Here his eyes shifted briefly back to Clint, who chewed his food in the most spiteful manner Natasha had ever witnessed. "But I wanted to catch you as soon as possible. Director Fury has given me the go-ahead to offer you a position on STRIKE team alpha."  
  
She kept her face in its usual mask of neutrality even if she wanted to roll her eyes and groan. Of course Nick was trying to distract her by filling her plate with something she wouldn't dream of passing up. And it'd be completely out of character if she did that. Nick would know what was up right away, that she hadn't given up on Stark and the Soldier at all. And that could lead to some unpleasantness. Like being suspended from work altogether.   
  
The few seconds of silence seemed to stretch on as the two men waited for her answer. No doubt Clint would be happy for her. They'd still see each other at work, but they'd be less likely to pair together for future assignments given that team alpha would take precedence. But they weren't deployed quite so often as other STRIKE teams, so it wasn't like she'd never see Clint again. Brock took the initiative and said, "It's understandable if you need some time to-"  
  
"No," she said. "I'll take it." Her actions might be under closer scrutiny with team alpha. But she'd receive higher security clearance. If she couldn't find a way to make that work in her favor, she had no business calling herself a spy. And besides that, Clint was always still there by her side, ready to help.  
  
Brock smiled his professional smile that told her nothing of what he personally thought of her. He couldn't be the type to let something so petty get in the way of his work. That kind of behavior in his position tended to leave people dead. He held out a hand to her and she took it. "Looking forward to working with you, Agent Romanoff."

 


End file.
